Geraldine Ferraro, who in 1984 became the first woman vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket, died Saturday in Boston, a family spokeswoman said.
Ferraro died at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was being treated for 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.
A three-term congresswoman from the New York City borough of Queens, Ferraro catapulted to national prominence in 1984 when she was chosen by presidential nominee Walter Mondale to join his ticket against incumbents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
In the end, Reagan won 49 of 50 states, 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 national 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.
Palin paid tribute to Ferraro on her Facebook page on Saturday.
“She broke one huge barrier and then went on to break many more,” Palin wrote. “May her example of hard work and dedication to America continue to inspire all women.”
I did not care for her politics, but she did break barriers. RIP.
If memory serves, Ms. Ferraro was slammed during the last presidential election when she dared speak out against the slurs Sarah Palin received.
RIP.
Reminds me of my all-time favorite Presidential campaign button.
Back in 1984 when Walter Mondale chose her as his VP nominee, one of my co-workers showed up with a large lapel botton that read:
“I’M VOTING FOR WALLY AND THE BEAVER!”
Onr of the things that pisses me off is this:
What the fuck was historic about that run? Nothing. She wasn’t the first woman to run for a major party nomination, hell, she wasn’t even the first DEMOCRAT woman to run. These people have absolutely no interest in history. Even recent fucking history. Shit, they could read old Doonesbury strips and get a better grasp of history then they have now. Bella Abzug. Shirley Chisholm. Remember them? Democrats and women, both supposedly, in 1972. Eight years before them a Republican woman ran, and the first woman to run for President ran 100 years before Abzug and Chisholm, in 1872. I read a book about her on an airplane once, Victoria Woodhull. Pick it up, it’s a good read. It’s called “The Woman Who Ran for President”. Not “The Lady Who Ran for President But Didn’t Really Count Because There Was No TV Back Then and she wasn’t Hillary Clinton”.
Fucking insane motherfucking idiots think we’re the dumb ones.
Don’t hold back, LMC. Tell us how you really feel.