R.I.P. Geraldine Ferraro

[Sonic Youth]

Geraldine Ferraro dies at 75
By: James Hohmann and Jonathan Martin
March 26, 2011 12:30 PM EDT
Politico.com

Geraldine Ferraro, the Queens congresswoman who made history as the first woman to serve on a major party’s presidential ticket, died Saturday. She was 75.

Her family said she passed away at Massachusetts General Hospital of complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer she’s struggled with for 12 years.

Eager to shake up a race he was losing, Walter Mondale chose Ferraro as his running-mate on the Democrats’ 1984 ticket. The pair lost the race badly, carrying only Minnesota and the District of Columbia against Ronald Reagan, but Ferraro became an inspiration for women in both parties to get into politics.
“Every time a woman runs, women win,” Ferraro famously said.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright served as Ferraro’s foreign policy adviser on the 1984 campaign and recalled that the New Yorker drew large, enthusiastic crowds but also tough scrutiny.

“When she stepped up on the stage at the San Francisco convention, that really opened the door in so many different ways,” Albright told POLITICO. “People questioned, frankly, whether a woman could do foreign policy. They asked her if she could press the nuclear button — questions they don’t ask men. But she cut through it all.”

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who now represents part of Ferraro’s old district and named a post office after her in Queens, was also at the Moscone Center in San Francisco that July night when the then-48-year-old, three-term House member accepted the vice-presidential nomination.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), who now represents part of Ferraro’s old district and named a post office after her in Queens, was a delegate on the convention floor in San Francisco when the then-48-year-old, three-term House member accepted the vice-presidential nomination.

“It was the ultimate breaking of the glass ceiling,” Maloney said in an interview Saturday. “She gave that glorious speech in that white suit and they I remember they put me on television because I had tears running down my face.”

Her voice breaking, Maloney called Ferraro “a wonderful friend, a role model and a mentor to me.”

Sarah Palin, the only other woman to be a major party’s nominee for vice president, recalled chatting with Ferraro on election night last November about “our excited expectation that someday that final glass ceiling would be shattered by the election of a woman president.”

“She broke one huge barrier and then went on to break many more,” Palin wrote in a note on Facebook. “The world will miss her. May she rest in peace and may her example of hard work and dedication to America continue to inspire all women.”

“To be a pioneer means you go before others and prepare the way,” Palin said on Fox News. “She plowed through so many things that have allowed the rest of us to be able to progress because (of her), standing on her shoulders. I just can’t say enough good things about what it is she accomplished.”

Ferraro worked intensely for women’s equality through groups like Emily’s List, which issued a statement praising her, and on behalf of other female candidates. She was a high-profile surrogate for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in 2008 and made waves for repeatedly accusing the media of sexist coverage.

Ferraro became a harsh critic of Barack Obama and his candidacy as Clinton faltered, but the president put it all aside in a Saturday statement.

“Sasha and Malia will grow up in a more equal America because of the life Geraldine Ferraro chose to live,” Obama said.

Virtually every woman who matters in politics rushed to express condolences, including tea party firebrand and likely Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann. “Our politics may have differed but today I pay tribute to a pioneer in American History,” Bachmann said Saturday in a Facebook posting.

Ferraro was a power player in New York politics for decades. After four years in the Queens County district attorney office, she won her U.S. House seat in a 1978 upset. She lost Democratic primaries for Senate in 1992 and 1998, but her endorsement remained especially valuable.

“The attacks against her were vicious, but she always carried herself with dignity throughout the process,” said George Arzt, a longtime public relations man in New York who was Mayor Ed Koch’s press secretary and knew Ferraro since the 1970s.

Geraldine Anne Ferraro was born on August 26, 1935, in Newburgh, New York.

Her father, an Italian immigrant, died when she was eight. Her mother was a seamstress. Ferraro got a law degree from Fordham University by going to classes at night while working as a second-grade public school teacher.

In 1978, after spending four years as an assistant district attorney in Queens, Ferraro was elected to the House from a conservative district in Queens.

Former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman, another pioneering New York Democrat who was the first female District Attorney in Brooklyn and the city’s first female Comptroller, recalled the day in 1978 when Ferraro came to her to ask for political advice.

Holtzman had been elected to the House six years earlier when, at age 31, she defeated the senior-most House member and the then-Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Emanuel Celler, in a primary.

“She wanted to run against [former Rep.] Jim Delaney, who had also served in Congress for years,” Holtzman recounted of Ferraro in an interview Saturday. “I said, ‘Don’t you think you should run for something lower than

Congress in your first try for elected office?’ She said, ‘No, I can do it,’ and of course she was right and my hesitation was wrong.” (Delaney, the Chair of New York’s delegation and House Rules Committee Chairman, ultimately retired and Ferraro won in a three-way primary)

“People now take for granted that women can hold the highest positions in the land and that’s partly because of Geraldine Ferraro - she had the courage, drive and tenacity to reach for the stars,” Holtzman said.

Maloney recalled attending a NOW meeting in New York and seeing Ferraro’s first campaign poster before even meeting the candidate. It said: “Finally, A Tough Democrat.”

She won reelection in 1980 and 1982 by increasingly large margins. In 1984, she garnered attention as head of the Democratic National Committee’s platform committee.

Mondale shook up the race when he tapped her as the party’s vice presidential nominee. Time Magazine heralded her selection as “A Historic Choice.” The bold move helped Mondale, who had himself been Jimmy Carter’s vice president, tighten a 16-point gap in the polls.

“Change is in the air, just as surely as when John Kennedy beckoned America to a new frontier; when Sally Ride rocketed into space and when Rev. Jesse Jackson ran for the office of president of the United States,” Ferraro told Democratic delegates in her July 1984 acceptance speech. “By choosing a woman to run for our nation’s second highest office, you sent a powerful signal to all Americans. There are no doors we cannot unlock. We will place no limits on achievement. If we can do this, we can do anything.”

Problematically, she had never been thoroughly vetted or faced intense scrutiny. For several weeks, critical press reports about the refusal of Ferraro’s husband, real estate developer John Zaccaro, to release his tax returns put the Mondale camp on the defensive.

Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush made a big issue of the family’s sketchy financial issues during the 1984 campaign. Bush came under fire after a live microphone caught him telling supporters that he’d “kicked a little ass” after their contentious debate. But the two made up in later years.

“Though we were one-time political opponents, I am happy to say Gerry and I became friends in time — a friendship marked by respect and affection,” Bush said in a Saturday statement. “I admired Gerry in many ways, not the least of which was the dignified and principled manner she blazed new trails for women in politics.”

New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, who represents much of Ferrary’s old district, emphasized the trails she blazed as the first Italian-American major party nominee.

“To residents of Queens, she was our hometown hero who never forgot her roots,” he said in a statement.

Ferraro returned to the public stage in the mid-1990s as a television political commentator and co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire.” She served as a permanent member of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1993 to 1996. During this period, she lost her two runs for the Senate.

“Gerry Ferraro symbolized grace in every aspect of her life, as a wife, mother, grandmother, community activist, lawyer, businesswoman, philanthropist and public servant,” said New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who beat her in the 1998 primary, in a statement. “She broke barriers with a matter-of-factness, modesty, and grace that made her achievements all the more important and becoming.”

Even though she couldn’t win elections, she remained a sought-after power broker. Her endorsements were prized, and she offered a huge boost to Maloney when she faced a tough primary challenge last year.

“When she walked into a room, you knew that an elite member of the political scene was there,” said Arzt, her friend and a powerful consultant. “Everyone turned to her, and she was given tremendous respect.”

Congress was planning to honor Ferraro this year, Maloney said, but the former vice-presidential nominee wanted to wait until July at which point her grandson was going to be a congressional page. Up until she died, Ferraro was focused on public service, said Maloney.

“The last time I saw her was a few weeks ago and she had a constituent case she was concerned about,” Maloney recalled.

Ferraro is survived by her husband of 50 years, three children and eight grandchildren.

“Geraldine Anne Ferraro Zaccaro was widely known as a leader, a fighter for justice, and a tireless advocate for those without a voice,” her family said in a statement. “To us, she was a wife, mother, grandmother and aunt, a woman devoted to and deeply loved by her family. Her courage and generosity of spirit throughout her life waging battles big and small, public and personal, will never be forgotten and will be sorely missed.”