I first met Geraldine Ferraro in the spring of 1978 when the then assistant DA of Queens County decided to run for Congress from the 9th Cong. Dist of NY. She had announced her candidacy against an almost 40 year incumbent James J Delaney, whom I had worked for prior to my election the New York State Assembly in 1976. My Assembly District was entirely within the 9th Congressional District. When Delaney decided not to seek another term, Ms.Ferraro sought my support. Our lunch was inconclusive and when I decided to stay in my Assembly post I did not endorse any of the three Democratic primary candidates. Geraldine Ferraro won with a majority in a three way race and made an impact on the district, the state and ultimately the nation.
She was tough. She didn’t mince words or as the right likes to say today “nuance” her positions. You knew where she stood. In those days in the predominantly Catholic part of Queens County, being a Catholic who supported a woman’s right to choose an abortion was a tough position for any candidate. Geraldine never faltered in her commitment to women’s rights. Once after her election we were both invited to an event sponsored by a pro-choice organization. The right-to-life folks decided to picket it; and Geraldine was the only Catholic Democrat to cross the picket line and attend - she sat at the same table as me.
Upon her election she sought out a suitable location for a district office and found the one she wanted that was the size and location she needed. But, the landlord wouldn’t rent to her until the middle of her first year in office. So of course the advisors (consultants and DC folks) said get another one. I invited her to share one of my district offices until the one she wanted was available. She did and ultimately got the one she wanted. She usually did get what she wanted and set out to accomplish. We had a local issue in my neighborhood that had rankled the folks for decades. Our zip code had a Brooklyn prefix and we were in Queens but it was a real hassle for our folks when it came to insurance and to home values to explain away the zip code. Even Cong. Delaney, one of the most powerful Congressmen of his era (he chaired the House Rules Committee), couldn’t get the zip code changed. When Geraldine ran in 1976 she said she’d get it changed. No one thought it could happen. In 1978 it was changed to a Flushing prefix - to the folks in the neighborhood it was like a miracle.
In early 1984 when Walter Mondale asked her to chair the Democratic Platform Committee, she assumed that meant that the talk of a VP nomination was just that - talk. We all did at that point and she began planning a 1986 race for US Senate. Then In July just before the convention Mondale asked her to come to Minnesota and he offered her the second spot on the ticket. The convention was electrified by the nomination of Geraldine Ferraro which had been announced before we convened. Under the rules we needed a petition of a few hundred delegates to place her name in nomination before the convention and I was asked to collect signatures for Ferraro. I went over to the Georgia delegation and sought out an old acquaintance of my grandparents and asked him to sign which he enthusiastically did. Turned out he was the leader of the Georgia Democrats for Life - imagine that.
I campaigned for her throughout that fall in our district and frankly she was treated both by the media and by many voters and organizations somewhat differently because she was a woman. And the fact that she was the first Italian- American on a national ticket also played into some of the treatment. But she took it all in stride, she often told me “If my name were Gerald Ferraro I wouldn’t have been chosen to be V.P.”. That was true; and it explains somewhat what she tried to say, somewhat inartfully, about Senator Obama’s candidacy against Senator Clinton in 2008.
She was unapologetically a liberal Democrat in the era of Reagan and the first resurgence of conservatism. And she always believed, as she said in 1984, “America is a land where dreams can come true for all of us.” When the first woman is elected President of the United States -- and that day will come - the name of Geraldine Ferraro will be repeated again many times as the trailblazer she was. But she was also a middle class Italian Catholic girl, raised by her widowed seamstress mother, who rose to the political heights and lived a life of decency, hard work and compassion. She was a daughter, a wife, a mother, a grandmother and almost a Vice President of the United States. WELL DONE.
3-26-2011
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