Geraldine Ferraro

Geraldine Anne Ferraro (August 26, 1935 March 26, 2011) was an American politician, diplomat, and attorney who served as a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1979 to 1985, representing New York's 9th congressional district. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the party's vice presidential nominee in the 1984 presidential election, running alongside presidential nominee and former Vice President Walter Mondale; this made her the first female vice-presidential nominee representing a major American political party. Ferraro was also a journalist, author, and businesswoman.

Born in Newburgh, New York, Ferraro grew up in New York City. She attended Marymount Manhattan College, where she met her future husband John Zaccaro, whom she married in 1960. After earning a Juris Doctor from the Fordham University, Ferraro worked as a public school teacher before training as a lawyer. She joined the Queens County District Attorney's Office in 1974, heading the new Special Victims Bureau that dealt with sex crimes, child abuse, and domestic violence. In 1978 she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where she rose rapidly in the party hierarchy while focusing on legislation to bring equity for women in the areas of wages, pensions, and retirement plans.

In 1984, former Vice President and presidential nominee Mondale, seen as an underdog, selected Ferraro as his running mate for the upcoming presidential election. In doing so, Ferraro also became the first widely recognized Italian American to be a major-party national nominee. The positive polling the Mondale–Ferraro ticket received when she joined soon faded, as damaging questions arose about her and her businessman husband Zaccaro's finances and wealth and her congressional disclosure statements. In the general election, Mondale and Ferraro were defeated in a landslide by Republican President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush.

After the 1984 election, Ferraro ran campaigns for a seat in the United States Senate from New York in 1992 and in 1998, both times starting as the front-runner for her party's nomination before losing in the primary election. She served as the Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1993 until 1996 during the presidential administration of Bill Clinton. She also continued her career as a journalist, author, and businesswoman, and served in the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Clinton. Ferraro died at the age of 75 in March 2011 from multiple myeloma, 12 years after being diagnosed.

Early life and education

thumb|left|upright|alt=Narrow, red three-story house with turret|Ferraro lived in this building in Newburgh until she was ten.

Geraldine Anne Ferraro was born on August 26, 1935, in Newburgh, New York, to Antonetta L. Ferraro (née Corrieri), a first-generation Italian American seamstress, and Dominick Ferraro, an Italian immigrant (from Marcianise, Campania) and owner of two restaurants. She had three brothers born before her, but one died in infancy and another at age three. Ferraro attended the parochial school Mount Saint Mary's in Newburgh when she was young. Her father died of a heart attack in , when she was eight. Ferraro's mother soon invested and lost the remainder of the family's money, forcing the family to move to a low-income area in the South Bronx while Ferraro's mother worked in the garment industry to support them. At Marymount Ferraro was a member of the honor society, active in several clubs and sports, voted most likely to succeed, Her mother was adamant that she get a full education, despite an uncle in the family saying, "Why bother? She's pretty. She's a girl. She'll get married." Ferraro attended Marymount Manhattan College with a scholarship During her senior year she began dating John Zaccaro of Forest Hills, Queens, who had graduated from Iona College with a commission in the U.S. Marine Corps. Ferraro received a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1956; she was the first woman in her family to gain a college degree. She earned a Juris Doctor degree with honors from Fordham University School of Law in 1960, Ferraro was one of only two women in her graduating class of 179. He became a realtor and businessman. The couple had three children, Donna (born 1962), John Jr. (born 1964), and Laura (born 1966). They would buy a condominium in Saint Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands in 1983. She also occasionally worked for other clients and did some pro bono work for women in family court. She spent time at local Democratic clubs, which allowed her to maintain contacts within the legal profession and become involved in local politics and campaigns. In 1970, she was elected president of the Queens County Women's Bar Association. by her cousin, District Attorney Nicholas Ferraro. Moreover, Ferraro found the nature of the cases she dealt with debilitating; She grew frustrated that she was unable to deal with root causes, and talked about running for legislative office; The location for the television series All in the Family, the district, which stretched from Astoria to Ozone Park, was known for its ethnic composition and conservative views. Her main issues were law and order, support for the elderly, and neighborhood preservation. Her Italian heritage also appealed to ethnic residents in the district. and quickly found prominence. established a rapport with other House Democratic leaders, this entitled her to a seat on the influential Steering and Policy Committee. both of which allowed Ferraro to push through projects to benefit her district. In particular, she assisted the successful effort of the Ridgewood and Glendale neighborhoods to get their ZIP codes changed from Brooklyn to their native Queens. The Reagan administration, at first lukewarm to the measure, decided to sign it to gain the benefits of its popular appeal. In , she led passage of a Superfund renewal bill and attacked the Reagan administration's handling of environmental site cleanups.

Ferraro took a congressional trip to Nicaragua at the start of 1984, where she spoke to the Contras.

In all, Ferraro served three two-year terms, being re-elected in 1980 and 1982.

While in the House, Ferraro's political self-description evolved to "moderate". The National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus pushed the notion, as did several top Democratic figures such as Speaker Tip O'Neill. both of whom were on Mondale's five-person short list.

Mondale selected Ferraro to be his vice-presidential candidate on , 1984. She stated, "I am absolutely thrilled." The Mondale campaign hoped that her selection would change a campaign in which he was well behind; in addition to attracting women, they hoped she could attract ethnic Democrats in the Northeast U.S. who had abandoned their party for Reagan in 1980.

As Ferraro was the first woman to run on a major party national ticket in the United States, and the first Italian American, her nomination at the 1984 Democratic National Convention was one of the most emotional moments of that gathering, with female delegates appearing joyous and proud at the historic occasion. In her acceptance speech, Ferraro said, "The daughter of an immigrant from Italy has been chosen to run for vice president in the new land my father came to love." Convention attendees were in tears during the speech, for not just its significance for women but all those who had immigrated to America.

thumb|left|upright=0.8|alt=Dark blue type on pinkish background, Ferraro's name above Mondale's, large photo of them waving to an unseen crowd|A [[Flyer (pamphlet)|flyer advertised a post-convention Queens Borough Hall rally, for Ferraro to introduce Mondale to New York City voters.]]

Ferraro gained immediate, large-scale media attention. At first, journalists focused on her novelty as a woman and her poor family background, and their coverage was overwhelmingly favorable. Nevertheless, Ferraro faced many press questions about her foreign policy inexperience, and responded by discussing her attention to foreign and national security issues in Congress. Ted Koppel questioned her closely about nuclear strategy and during Meet the Press she was asked, "Do you think that in any way the Soviets might be tempted to try to take advantage of you simply because you are a woman?"

The choice of Ferraro was viewed as a gamble, and pundits were uncertain whether it would result in a net gain or loss of votes for the Mondale campaign. While her choice was popular among Democratic activists, polls immediately after the announcement showed that only 22 percent of women were excited about Ferraro's selection, versus 18 percent who agreed that it was a "bad idea". By a three-to-one margin, voters thought that pressure from women's groups had led to Mondale's decision rather than his having chosen the best available candidate. Nonetheless, in the days after the convention Ferraro proved an effective campaigner, with a brash and confident style that forcefully criticized the Reagan administration and sometimes almost overshadowed Mondale. (While the Mondale campaign had anticipated some questions, it had only spent 48 hours on vetting Ferraro's family's finances.) This was also the first time the American media had to deal with a national candidate's husband. with each half partners in Zaccaro's company, Ferraro had little knowledge of his business, or even how much he was worth. Zaccaro did not understand the greater public exposure that his wife's new position brought to their family, and resisted releasing his financial information. She joked, "So you people married to Italian men, you know what it's like."

The tax announcement dominated television and newspapers, Republicans saw her finances as a "genderless" issue that they could attack Ferraro with without creating a backlash, and law enforcement officials downplayed the allegations.

A week after her previous statement, Ferraro said Zaccaro had changed his mind and would indeed release his tax records, which was done on . The full statements included notice of payment of some $53,000 in back federal taxes that she owed due to what was described as an accountant's error. No campaign issue during the entire 1984 presidential campaign received more media attention than Ferraro's finances. The exposure diminished Ferraro's rising stardom, removed whatever momentum the Mondale–Ferraro ticket gained out of the convention, and delayed formation of a coherent message for the fall campaign. In a 1982 briefing for Congress, Ferraro had written that "the Catholic position on abortion is not monolithic and there can be a range of personal and political responses to the issue." Ferraro was criticized by Cardinal John O'Connor, the Catholic Archbishop of New York, and James Timlin, the Bishop of Scranton, for misrepresenting the Catholic Church's position on abortion. After several days of back-and-forth debate in the public media, Ferraro finally conceded that, "the Catholic Church's position on abortion is monolithic" but went on to say that "But I do believe that there are a lot of Catholics who do not share the view of the Catholic Church". Mondale and Ferraro rarely touched during their appearances together, to the point that he would not even place his palm on her back when they stood side by side; Ferraro later said this was because anything more and "people were afraid that it would look like, 'Oh, my God, they're dating.'".

There was one vice-presidential debate between Congresswoman Ferraro and Vice President George H. W. Bush. Held on , the result was proclaimed mostly even by the press and historians; women voters tended to think Ferraro had won, while men, Bush. In the days leading up to the debate, Second Lady of the United States Barbara Bush had publicly referred to Ferraro as "that four-million-dollar—I can't say it, but it rhymes with 'rich'." Barbara Bush soon apologized, saying she had not meant to imply Ferraro was "a witch". Teeley declined to apologize for the remark, saying it had no sexist implications and the Ferraro campaign was being "hypersensitive" in complaining about it. Ferraro's mother had never told her about his arrest; The printing of the story led Ferraro to state that Post publisher Rupert Murdoch "does not have the worth to wipe the dirt under [my mother's] shoes."

Ferraro's womanhood was consistently discussed during the campaign; one study found that a quarter of newspaper articles written about her contained gendered language. Throughout, Ferraro kept campaigning, taking on the traditional running-mate role of attacking the opposition vigorously.

thumb|Geraldine Ferraro at the [[University of Texas at Arlington, September 1984]]

On November 6, Mondale and Ferraro lost the general election in a landslide. They received only 41 percent of the popular vote compared to Reagan and Bush's 59 percent, and in the Electoral College won only Mondale's home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia. The ticket even lost Ferraro's congressional district, which had long been one of the more conservative districts in New York City; it tended to vote Republican in presidential races. Ferraro's presence on the ticket had little measurable effect overall. Of the tenth of voters who decided based on the vice-presidential candidates, 54 percent went to Mondale–Ferraro, Reagan's personal appeal and campaign themes of prosperity and "It's morning again in America" were quite strong, while Mondale's liberal campaign alienated Southern whites and northern blue-collar workers who usually voted Democratic. Political observers generally agree that no combination of Democrats could have won the election in 1984.

After the election, the House Ethics Committee found that Ferraro had technically violated the Ethics in Government Act by failing to report, or reporting incorrectly, details of her family's finances, and that she should have reported her husband's holdings on her congressional disclosure forms. However, the committee concluded that she had acted without "deceptive intent", and since she was leaving Congress anyway, no action against her was taken.

Ferraro is one of only four U.S. women to run on a major party national ticket. The others are Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee;

The campaign did lead to the greater adoption of the honorific "Ms." Two years after the campaign, the Times finally changed its policy and began using "Ms."

First U.S. Senate run and ambassadorship

Ferraro had relinquished her House seat to run for the vice presidency. Her new-found fame led to an appearance in a Diet Pepsi commercial in 1985. She also earned over $300,000 by giving speeches. A Senate candidacy had been her original plan for her career, before she was named to Mondale's ticket. But in , she said she would not run, due to an ongoing U.S. Justice Department probe on her and her husband's finances stemming from the 1984 campaign revelations. Then, in , he was indicted on unrelated felony charges regarding an alleged 1981 bribery of Queens Borough President Donald Manes concerning a cable television contract. A full year later, he was acquitted at trial. The case against him was circumstantial, a key prosecution witness proved unreliable, and the defense did not have to present its own testimony. Meanwhile, in , the couple's son John had been arrested for possession and sale of cocaine. He was convicted, and in , sentenced to four months' imprisonment; Ferraro broke down in tears in court relating the stress the episode had placed on her family.

Ferraro remained active in raising money for Democratic candidates nationwide, especially women candidates.

She also did some commentating for television. <!-- She joined a law firm.

thumb|right|upright=0.8|Ferraro at an upstate New York union hall appearance in 1992

By October 1991, Ferraro was ready to enter elective politics again, and ran for the Democratic nomination in the 1992 United States Senate election in New York. Her opponents were State Attorney General Robert Abrams, Reverend Al Sharpton, Congressman Robert J. Mrazek, and New York City Comptroller and former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman. Abrams was considered the early front-runner. Ferraro emphasized her career as a teacher, prosecutor, congresswoman, and mother, and talked about how she was tough on crime. Ferraro drew renewed attacks during the primary campaign from the media and her opponents over Zaccaro's finances and business relationships. She objected that a male candidate would not receive nearly as much attention regarding his wife's activities.

Holtzman, who was trailing in polls, borrowed over $400,000 from Fleet Bank to run a negative ad accusing Ferraro and Zaccaro of taking more than $300,000 in rent in the 1980s from the DiBernardo-run pornography company whose presence in Zaccaro's building had been raised during her 1984 vice-presidential campaign. Ferraro said there had been efforts to oust the company at the time, but they had remained in the building for three more years. Ferraro said in response that those two had never met. In the , 1992, primary, Abrams edged out Ferraro by less than a percentage point, winning 37 percent of the vote to 36 percent, with Sharpton and Holtzman well behind. Ferraro did not concede she had lost for two weeks. She was eventually persuaded by Governor Mario Cuomo and state party leaders into giving an unenthusiastic endorsement with just three days to go before the general election, in exchange for an apology by Abrams for the tone of the primary. D'Amato won the election by a very narrow margin.

Following the Senate primary loss, Ferraro became a managing partner in the New York office of Keck, Mahin & Cate, a Chicago-based law firm. There she organized the office and spoke with clients, but did not actively practice law and left before the firm fell into difficulties.

President Clinton appointed Ferraro as a member of the United States delegation to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in . She attended the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna as the alternate U.S. delegate. Then in , Clinton promoted her to be United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, saying that Ferraro had been "a highly effective voice for the human rights of women around the world." The Clinton administration named Ferraro vice-chair of the U.S. delegation to the landmark Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing; in this role she picked a strong team of experts in human rights issues to serve with her. During her stint on the commission, it for the first time condemned anti-Semitism as a human rights violation, and also for the first time prevented China from blocking a motion criticizing its human rights record. Regarding a previous China motion that had failed, Ferraro had told the commission, "Let us do what we were sent here to do—decide important questions of human rights on their merits, not avoid them." as the co-host representing the "from the left" vantage. She kept her brassy, rapid-fire speech and New York accent intact, and her trial experience from her prosecutor days was a good fit for the program's format. The show stayed strong in ratings for CNN, and the job was lucrative.

At the start of 1998, Ferraro left Crossfire and ran for the Democratic nomination again in the 1998 United States Senate election in New York. She had done no fundraising, out of fear of conflict of interest with her Crossfire job, but was nonetheless immediately perceived as the front-runner. Unlike the previous campaigns, her family finances never became an issue. Schumer, a tireless fundraiser, outspent her by a five-to-one margin, and Ferraro failed to establish a political image current with the times. In the , 1998 primary, she was beaten soundly by Schumer by a 51 percent to 26 percent margin. Schumer would go on to decisively unseat D'Amato in the general election.

The 1998 primary defeat brought an end to Ferraro's political career. The New York Times wrote at the time: "If Ms. Ferraro's rise was meteoric, her political career's denouement was protracted, often agonizing and, at first glance, baffling." which sought to support the educational and professional goals of its members and put forward positive role models in order to fight ethnic stereotyping, and was still a distinguished member of its board at the time of her death. Ferraro was connected with many other political and non-profit organizations. She was a board member of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 1992, she was on the founding board of Project Vote Smart. By 1993, she was serving on the Fordham Law School Board of Visitors, as well as on the boards of the National Breast Cancer Research Fund, the New York Easter Seal Society, and the Pension Rights Center, and was one of hundreds of public figures on the Planned Parenthood Federation of America's Board of Advocates. and in 2003, the board of the National Women's Health Resource Center. During the 2000s she was on the board of advisors to the Committee to Free Lori Berenson.

Framing a Life: A Family Memoir was published by Ferraro in . It depicts the life story of her mother and immigrant grandmother; it also portrays the rest of her family, and is a memoir of her early life, but includes relatively little about her political career.

Ferraro had felt unusually tired at the end of her second Senate campaign. She did not publicly disclose the illness until , when she went to Washington to successfully press in congressional hearings for passage of the Hematological Cancer Research Investment and Education Act. Ferraro became a frequent speaker on the disease, and an avid supporter and honorary board member of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. Her advocacy helped make the new treatments approved and available for others as well.

Ferraro joined Fox News Channel as a regular political commentator in . By 2005, she was making sporadic appearances on the channel, During the 2000s,  Ferraro was an affiliated faculty member at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute.

thumb|240px|alt=Four adult women standing in a lobby perhaps, stiff pose, large indoor plant in background|Ferraro (left) marked [[Women's History Month in 2003, with Senator Hillary Clinton, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, and opera singer Denyce Graves.]]

In January 2000, Ferraro and Lynn Martin—a former Republican Congresswoman and U.S. Secretary of Labor who had played Ferraro in George H. W. Bush's debate preparations in 1984 Its goal was to advise corporations on how to develop more women leaders and make their workplaces more amenable to female employees. G&L Strategies subsequently became part of Golin Harris International. an international investor relations and corporate communications component of Huntsworth. There she worked with corporations, non-profit organizations, state governments and political figures. She republished Ferraro: My Story in 2004, with a postscript summarizing her life in the twenty years since the campaign.

Ferraro was a member of the board of directors of Goodrich Petroleum beginning in . She was also a board member for New York Bancorp in the 1990s.

Ferraro became a principal in the government relations practice of the Blank Rome law firm in , working both in New York and Washington She assisted with fundraising by assuming an honorary post on the finance committee for Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign.

A heated nomination battle emerged between Clinton and Barack Obama.

The campaign between the two also saw racial dust-ups caused by perceptions of remarks made by campaign surrogates. (Ferraro had made a similar comment in 1988 disparaging Jesse Jackson's candidacy in the party's presidential primaries, saying that because of his "radical" views, "if Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn't be in the race.") Ferraro justified the statements by referring to her own run for vice president. Echoing a statement she wrote about herself in 1988, Ferraro said that "I was talking about historic candidacies and what I started off by saying (was that) if you go back to 1984 and look at my historic candidacy, which I had just talked about all these things, in 1984, if my name was Gerard Ferraro instead of Geraldine Ferraro, I would have never been chosen as a vice-presidential candidate. It had nothing to do with my qualification." There was strong criticism and charges of racism from many supporters of Obama and Obama called them "patently absurd". Ferraro resigned from Clinton's finance committee on , 2008, two days after the firestorm began, saying that she didn't want the Obama camp to use her comments to hurt Clinton's campaign.

Ferraro continued to engage the issue and criticize the Obama campaign via her position as a Fox News Channel contributor. By early April, Ferraro said people were deluging her with negative comments and trying to get her removed from one of the boards she was on: "This has been the worst three weeks of my life."

During September 2008, Ferraro gained attention yet again after the announcement of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, the first such major party bid for a woman since her own in 1984. In reaction to the nomination, Ferraro said, "It's great to be the first, but I don't want to be the only. And so now it is wonderful to see a woman on a national ticket." Ferraro speculated that the pick might win Republican presidential nominee John McCain the election, but said that she was supporting Obama now due to his running mate selection of Joe Biden having resolved her concerns about Obama's lack of experience in certain areas. Ferraro criticized the media's scrutiny of Palin's background and family as gender-based and saw parallels with how she was treated by the media during her own run; a University of Alabama study also found that media framing of Ferraro and Palin was similar and often revolved around their nominations being political gambles. A Newsweek cover story detected a change in how women voters responded to a female vice presidential candidate from Ferraro's time to Palin's, but Ferraro correctly predicted that the bounce that McCain received from the Palin pick would dissipate. In a friendly joint retrospective of her 1984 debate with George H. W. Bush, Ferraro said she had had more national issues experience in 1984 than Palin did now, but that it was important that Palin make a good showing in her vice presidential debate so that "little girls [could] see someone there who can stand toe to toe with [Biden]." McCain and Palin ended up losing, but regardless of the 1984 or 2008 election result, Ferraro said that "Every time a woman runs, women win." Much of her care took place at Dana–Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, where she also acted as an informal advocate for other patients. She was able to make a joint appearance with Palin on Fox News Channel's coverage of the November 2010 midterm elections.

In she went to Massachusetts General Hospital to receive treatment for pain caused by a fracture, a common complication of multiple myeloma. Once there, however, doctors discovered she had come down with pneumonia. Unable to return to her New York home, Ferraro died at Massachusetts General on , 2011. In addition to her husband and three children, who were all present, she was survived by eight grandchildren. Mondale called her "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."

A funeral Mass was held for her on March 31 at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer in New York, the site where Ferraro and Zaccaro had been married and had renewed their vows on their 50th anniversary the year before. Figures from local, state, and national politics were present, and Mondale and both Clintons were among the speakers.

When Hillary Clinton finally captured the Democratic nomination in the 2016 presidential election, becoming the first woman to do so for a major party, there was considerable media commentary recalling, and relating this to, Ferraro's breakthrough 32 years earlier.

Awards and honors

thumb|right|P.S. 290Q Geraldine Ferraro Campus in Queens.

Ferraro was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.

Ferraro received honorary degrees during the 1980s and early 1990s, from Marymount Manhattan College (1982), New York University Law School (1984), Hunter College (1985), Plattsburgh College (1985), College of Boca Raton (1989), Virginia State University (1989), Muhlenberg College (1990), Briarcliffe College for Business (1990), and Potsdam College (1991). She subsequently received an honorary degree from Case Western Reserve University (2003).

During her time in Congress, Ferraro received numerous awards from local organizations in Queens. In 2008, Ferraro was the initial recipient of the annual Trailblazer Award from the National Conference of Women's Bar Associations, and received the Edith I. Spivack Award from the New York County Lawyers' Association. In 2009, legislation passed the House of Representatives calling for a post office in Long Island City in Queens to be renamed for Ferraro, and in 2010, the Geraldine A. Ferraro Post Office was accordingly rededicated.

In the fall of 2013, P.S. 290Q in Ridgewood, Queens, was reopened as the A.C.E. Academy for Scholars on the Geraldine A. Ferraro Campus.

In 2018 she was chosen by the National Women's History Project as one of its honorees for Women's History Month in the United States.

Electoral history

Democratic primary for the 1978 New York's 9th congressional district election

Geraldine Ferraro – 10,254 (52.98%)
Thomas J. Manton – 5,499 (28.41%)
Patrick C. Deignan – 3,603 (18.61%)

1978 New York's 9th congressional district election

Geraldine Ferraro (D) – 51,350 (54.17%)
Alfred A. DelliBovi (R, Conservative) – 42,108 (44.42%)
Theodore E. Garrison (Liberal) – 1,329 (1.40%)

1980 New York's 9th congressional district election

Geraldine Ferraro (D) (Inc.) – 63,796 (58.34%)
Vito P. Battista (R, Conservative, Right to Life) – 44,473 (40.67%)
Gertrude Geniale (Liberal) – 1,091 (1.00%)

1982 New York's 9th congressional district election

Geraldine Ferraro (D) (Inc.) – 75,286 (73.22%)
John J. Weigandt (R) – 20,352 (19.79%)
Ralph G. Groves (Conservative) – 6,011 (5.85%)
Patricia A. Salargo (Liberal) – 1,171 (1.14%)

thumb|right

1984 Democratic National Convention (vice-presidential tally)

Geraldine Ferraro – 3,920
Shirley Chisholm – 3

1984 United States presidential election

Ronald Reagan/George H. W. Bush (R) (Inc.) – 54,166,829 (58.5%) and 525 electoral votes (49 states carried)
Walter Mondale/Geraldine Ferraro (D) – 37,449,813 (40.4%) and 13 electoral votes (1 state and D.C. carried)
David Bergland/Jim Lewis (L) – 227,204 (0.2%) and 0 electoral votes

Democratic primary for the 1992 U.S. Senate election

Robert Abrams – 426,904 (37%)
Geraldine Ferraro – 415,650 (36%)
Al Sharpton – 166,665 (14%)
Elizabeth Holtzman – 144,026 (12%)

Democratic primary for the 1998 U.S. Senate election

Chuck Schumer – 388,701 (50.83%)
Geraldine Ferraro – 201,625 (26.37%)
Mark Green – 145,819 (19.07%)
Eric Ruano-Melendez – 28,493 (3.73%)

Explanatory notes

Citations

General and cited references

External links

Text of speech accepting Democratic Party nomination for Vice President of the United States, , 1984
FBI file on Geraldine Ferraro
"Geraldine Ferraro" – Video produced by Makers: Women Who Make America
Geraldine Ferraro: Paving the Way – Documentary film about Geraldine Ferraro
"Geraldine A. Ferraro collected news and commentary" at The New York Times