First VP Candidate Geraldine Ferraro Dies At 75

BOSTON – Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman vice presidential candidate on a
major party ticket and a barrier-breaking pioneer for women in politics,
died Saturday.

Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was being treated
for complications of blood cancer. She died just before 10 a.m., said Amanda
Fuchs Miller, a family friend who worked for Ferraro in her 1998 Senate bid
and was acting as a spokeswoman for the family.

In 1984, Ferraro was a relatively obscure Democratic congresswoman from the
New York City borough of Queens when she was tapped by presidential nominee
Walter Mondale to join his ticket against incumbents Ronald Reagan and
George H. W. Bush. Mondale's campaign had struggled to gain traction and his
selection of Ferraro, at least momentarily, revived his momentum and
energized millions of women who were thrilled to see one of their own on a
national ticket.

The blunt, feisty Ferraro charmed audiences initially, and for a time polls
showed the Democratic ticket gaining ground in the presidential contest. But
her candidacy ultimately proved rocky as she fought ethics charges and
traded barbs with Bush, her vice presidential rival, over accusations of
sexism and class warfare.

Ferraro later told an interviewer, "I don't think I'd run again for vice
president," then added "Next time I'd run for president."

Reagan won 49 of 50 states in 1984, the largest landslide since Franklin D.
Roosevelt's first re-election over Alf Landon in 1936. But Ferraro had
forever sealed her place as trailblazer for women in politics, laying the
path for Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton's historic presidential bid in 2008
and Republican John McCain's choice of a once-obscure Alaska governor, Sarah
Palin, as his running mate that year.

"At the time it happened it was such a phenomenal breakthrough," said Ruth
Mandel of the Center on the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers
University. "She stepped on the path to higher office before anyone else,
and her footprint is still on that path."

Palin, who often spoke of Ferraro on the campaign trail despite their
political differences, paid tribute to her Saturday.

"She broke one huge barrier and then went on to break many more," Palin
wrote on her Facebook page. "May her example of hard work and dedication to
America continue to inspire all women."

For his part, Mondale remembered his former running mate as "a remarkable
woman and a dear human being."

"She was a pioneer in our country for justice for women and a more open
society. She broke a lot of molds and it's a better country for what she
did," Mondale told The Associated Press.

Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where she had gone
earlier in the week for a procedure to relieve back pain caused by a
fracture. Such fractures are common in people with her type of blood cancer
because of the thinning of their bones, said Dr. Noopur Raje, the Mass
General doctor who treated her.

Ferraro, however, developed pneumonia, which made impossible to perform the
procedure, and it soon became clear she didn't have long to live, Raje said.
Since she was too ill to return to New York, her family came to Boston to
see her.

Raje said it seemed Ferraro held out until her husband and three children
arrived. They were all at her bedside when she passed, she said.

"Gerry actually waited for all of them to come, which I think was
incredible," said Raje, director of the myloma program at the hospital's
cancer center. "They were all able to say their goodbyes to Mom."

Ferraro stepped into the national spotlight at the Democratic convention in
1984, giving the world its first look at a co-ed presidential ticket. It
seemed, at times, an awkward arrangement — she and Mondale stood together
and waved at the crowd but did not hug and barely touched.

Delegates erupted in cheers at the first line of her speech accepting the
vice-presidential nomination.

"My name is Geraldine Ferraro," she declared. "I stand before you to
proclaim tonight: America is the land where dreams can come true for all of
us."

Her acceptance speech launched eight minutes of cheers, foot-stamping and
tears.

Ferraro, a mother of three who campaigned wearing pastel-hued dresses and
pumps, sometimes overshadowed Mondale on the campaign trail, often drawing
larger crowds and more media attention than the presidential candidate.

But controversy accompanied her acclaim.

A Roman Catholic, she encountered frequent, vociferous protests of her
favorable view of abortion rights.

She famously tangled with Bush, her vice presidential rival who struggled at
times over how aggressively to attack Ferraro.

In their only nationally televised debate, in October 1984, Bush raised
eyebrows when he said "Let me help you with the difference, Ms. Ferraro,
between Iran and the embassy in Lebanon." Ferraro shot back, saying she
resented Bush's "patronizing attitude that you have to teach me about
foreign policy."

Ferraro would later suggest on the campaign trail that Bush and his family
were wealthy and therefore didn't understand the problems faced by ordinary
voters. That comment irked Bush's wife, Barbara, who said Ferraro had more
money than the Bush family. "I can't say it, but it rhymes with rich,"
Barbara Bush told reporters when asked to describe Ferraro. She later
apologized.

In a statement, Bush praised Ferraro for "the dignified and principled
manner she blazed new trails for women in politics." He said that after the
1984 race, "Gerry and I became friends in time — a friendship marked by
respect and affection."

Ferraro's run also was beset by ethical questions, first about her campaign
finances and tax returns, then about the business dealings of her husband,
real estate developer John Zaccaro. Ferraro attributed much of the
controversy to bias against Italian-Americans.

Zaccaro pleaded guilty in 1985 to a misdemeanor charge of scheming to
defraud in connection with obtaining financing for the purchase of five
apartment buildings. Two years later, he was acquitted of trying to extort a
bribe from a cable television company.

Ferraro's son, John Zaccaro Jr., was convicted in 1988 of selling cocaine to
an undercover Vermont state trooper and served three months under house
arrest.

Some observers said the legal troubles were a drag on Ferraro's later
political ambitions, which included her unsuccessful bids for the Democratic
nomination for U.S. Senate in New York in 1992 and 1998.

Ferraro, a supporter of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, was back in the
news in March 2008 when she stirred up a controversy by appearing to suggest
that Sen. Barack Obama achieved his status in the presidential race only
because he is black.

She later stepped down from an honorary post in the Clinton campaign, but
insisted she meant no slight against Obama.

In a statement, Obama praised Ferraro as a trailblazer who had made the
world better for his daughters.

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

Ferraro received a law degree from Fordham University in 1960, the same year
she married and became a full-time homemaker and mother. She said she kept
her maiden name to honor her mother, a widow who had worked long hours as a
seamstress.

After years in a private law practice, she took a job as an assistant Queens
district attorney in 1974. She headed the office's special victims' bureau,
which prosecuted sex crimes and the abuse of children and the elderly. In
1978, she won the first of three terms in Congress representing a
blue-collar district of Queens.

After losing in 1984, she became a fellow of the Institute of Politics at
the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University until an
unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate nomination in 1992.

She returned to the law after her 1992 Senate run, acting as an advocate for
women raped during ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia.

Her advocacy work and support of President Bill Clinton won her the position
of ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission, where she
served in 1994 and 1995.

She co-hosted CNN's "Crossfire," in 1996 and 1997 but left to take on Chuck
Schumer, then a little-known Brooklyn congressman, in the 1998 Democratic
Senate primary. She placed a distant second, declaring her political career
finished after she took 26 percent of the vote to Schumer's 51 percent.

In June 1999, she announced that she was joining a Washington, D.C., area
public relations firm to head a group advising clients on women's issues.

Ferraro revealed two years later that she had been diagnosed with blood
cancer.

She discussed blood cancer research before a Senate panel that month and
said she hoped to live long enough "to attend the inauguration of the first
woman president of the United States."