Death of US political pioneer whose star had faded

Back in the 1980s, an inspirational woman stood as a candidate for the US vice-presidency. She died at the weekend

GERALDINE FERRARO died on Saturday, after a long illness. In 1984, she was the first female vice-presidential candidate in an American election, standing with Walter Mondale for the Democrats. It was just 64 years after women had got the vote in the United States. It would be 24 years before there would be another female candidate for the vice-presidency, one Sarah Palin.

It is strange that our political week should end on the rather muted note of Ferraro’s death. In 1984, she was an inspiring figure in her zippy business suits. “If we can do this we can do anything,” she said. There weren’t too many women in politics – yes, even fewer than there are now – and she was confident and tough.

On Saturday, President Barack Obama said: “Geraldine will forever be remembered as a trailblazer.” Even though we only have a sample of two, it seems there is a pattern here whereby female vice-presidential candidates will be vivid, extrovert and controversial. In other words, trouble. They will be chosen by boring-old-bloke candidates rather wildly, in desperation. They will come down in flames.

Ferraro's obituary in the New York Timesmakes fascinating reading, and not just because it reminds us of the optimism of her heyday. She had a sunniness about her. She looked clever and capable and cheerful. She had a killer smile.

Despite her later achievements, the most striking story about Ferraro was set before she was born. Her mother, Antonetta, had already lost two children when she became pregnant with Geraldine. One little boy, Gerard, had been killed in an automobile accident at the age of three. Mrs Ferraro continued to wash and iron the child’s clothes after his death. When the time came to deliver her fourth child, she refused to leave her surviving son, Carl, alone. So Geraldine was born at home, and named for her dead brother. And she kept her maiden name after her marriage in honour of her mother, who reared her as a single parent after her father’s death.

Mr Ferraro had died on the morning he was due to appear in court accused of running a numbers racket. Geraldine was eight years old. When, years later, she became the vice-presidential candidate, reporters found more information on her father and his alleged activities. Walter Mondale said that in his view no male candidate would have been subjected to such close scrutiny as Ferraro and her family had been.

She was a congresswoman from Queens. She had a sass about her. She had three children whom she had stayed at home to raise, we were told, until they were old enough for her to return to work. She was the protege of Tipp O’Neill, who believed in her. She had the backing of Mario Cuomo, who was the one who had encouraged her to run for office in the first place. Her successful election – and Mondale’s too of course – seemed only a matter of form. How could anyone in America vote for boring old Reagan and George Bush snr? In fact the Mondale-Ferraro ticket was a disaster, winning only one state, Minnesota (Mondale’s home state), and the District of Columbia.

As a female and a Catholic, Ferraro had come under ferocious pressure on the abortion issue. She was privately opposed to abortion, she said, but supported the right to choose. More damaging than the abortion issue was the fact that her husband, John Zaccaro, at first refused to open up his tax returns to public scrutiny. Mondale, according to Saturday's New York Times, reckoned the Zaccaros had cost him 15 percentage points.

Mind you, Mondale didn’t seem to have too many percentage points that hung around. He had confidently told Americans that they were going to have to tolerate higher taxes, and Americans – including the American women Mondale had been so certain of attracting if he had a female running mate – decided they’d give that a skip.

After the disaster of the 1984 election, Geraldine Ferraro made a television commercial for Diet Pepsi. This did not go down too well with her supporters, as you might imagine. The investigations into her financial dealings continued after the election. She was revealed to have almost $4 million, and that was back in the days when $4 million was a lot of money.

She had a boat, a full-time uniformed maid (you’ve got to love her for that) and holiday homes on Fire Island and the Virgin Islands.

None of that was a crime, but investigations into what the New York Timescalls "her associations and financiers" revealed "one questionable thing after another".

So Ferraro vanished from the international scene, from the way our television brains gaze at the world. It was right that her career was halted if there were any concerns over her financial dealings and, in fact, there seems to have been plenty.

She was a remarkably able woman who had gone from being a widow’s mite to being a player on the national stage of American politics, as well as being a wife and mother. This is a difficult balance to strike. Those of us who saw her in her prime will never forget her; we can see her smile still.