1984 Democratic National Convention
Encyclopedia
The 1984 National Convention of the U.S. Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 was held at the Moscone Center
Moscone Center
Moscone Center is the largest convention and exhibition complex in San Francisco, California. It comprises three main halls: Two underground halls underneath Yerba Buena Gardens, known as Moscone North and Moscone South, and a three-level Moscone West exhibition hall across 4th Street...

 in San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...

 from July 16 to July 19, 1984, to select a candidate for the 1984 United States presidential election. At the convention Walter Mondale
Walter Mondale
Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale is an American Democratic Party politician, who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States , under President Jimmy Carter, and as a United States Senator for Minnesota...

 was nominated for President
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 and Geraldine Ferraro
Geraldine Ferraro
Geraldine Anne Ferraro was an American attorney, a Democratic Party politician, and a member of the United States House of Representatives. She was the first female Vice Presidential candidate representing a major American political party....

 for Vice President. Ferraro became the first woman to be nominated by either party for the Presidency or Vice-Presidency. In another first, the 1984 Democratic Convention was chaired by the female governor of Kentucky, Martha Layne Collins
Martha Layne Collins
Martha Layne Collins is a politician from the US state of Kentucky. From 1983 to 1987 she was the 56th Governor of Kentucky, having served the previous four years as lieutenant governor. She was Kentucky's first and only female governor to date...

. The Democratic National Committee
Democratic National Committee
The Democratic National Committee is the principal organization governing the United States Democratic Party on a day to day basis. While it is responsible for overseeing the process of writing a platform every four years, the DNC's central focus is on campaign and political activity in support...

 Chairman at the time, Charles T. Manatt, led the convention.

Events of the Convention

New York Governor Mario Cuomo
Mario Cuomo
Mario Matthew Cuomo served as the 52nd Governor of New York from 1983 to 1994, and is the father of Andrew Cuomo, the current governor of New York.-Early life:...

 gave a well-received keynote speech.
The speech is available online at American Rhetoric's top 100 speeches, number eleven. Mondale's major rivals for the nomination, Senator Hart and Rev. Jackson, also gave speeches.

Jackson also attempted to move the party's platform farther to the left at the Convention, but without much success. He did succeed in one instance, concerning affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...

.

President

The candidates for U.S. president earned the following numbers of delegates:
  • Walter Mondale
    Walter Mondale
    Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale is an American Democratic Party politician, who served as the 42nd Vice President of the United States , under President Jimmy Carter, and as a United States Senator for Minnesota...

     - 2,191 (56.41%)
  • Gary Hart
    Gary Hart
    Gary Hart is an American politician, lawyer, author, professor and commentator. He served as a Democratic Senator representing Colorado , and ran in the U.S...

     - 1,201 (30.92%)
  • Jesse Jackson
    Jesse Jackson
    Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...

     - 466 (12.00%)
  • Thomas Eagleton
    Thomas Eagleton
    Thomas Francis Eagleton was a United States Senator from Missouri, serving from 1968–1987. He is best remembered for briefly being the Democratic vice presidential nominee under George McGovern in 1972...

     - 18 (0.46%)
  • George McGovern
    George McGovern
    George Stanley McGovern is an historian, author, and former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the Democratic Party nominee in the 1972 presidential election....

     - 4 (0.10%)
  • John Glenn
    John Glenn
    John Herschel Glenn, Jr. is a former United States Marine Corps pilot, astronaut, and United States senator who was the first American to orbit the Earth and the third American in space. Glenn was a Marine Corps fighter pilot before joining NASA's Mercury program as a member of NASA's original...

     - 2 (0.05%)
  • Joe Biden
    Joe Biden
    Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama...

     - 1 (0.03%)
  • Martha Kirkland - 1 (0.03%)


Jesse Jackson unsuccessfully called for the suspension of the party's electoral rules to give him a number of delegates closer to the 20% average share of the vote he garnered during the primaries. The system tended to punish shallow showings as yielding no delegates at all, hence Jackson's smaller delegate count than would be expected (12%).

Vice-President

Geraldine Ferraro
Geraldine Ferraro
Geraldine Anne Ferraro was an American attorney, a Democratic Party politician, and a member of the United States House of Representatives. She was the first female Vice Presidential candidate representing a major American political party....

 was nominated as the first woman to receive a major party nomination by acclamation on a voice vote.

See also

  • 1984 Democratic Presidential Primaries
    Democratic Party (United States) presidential primaries, 1984
    The 1984 Democratic presidential primaries were the selection process by which voters of the Democratic Party chose its nominee for President of the United States in the 1984 U.S. presidential election...

  • Rosalind Wiener Wyman
    Rosalind Wiener Wyman
    Rosalind Wiener Wyman is a California political figure who was the youngest person ever elected to the Los Angeles City Council and the second woman to serve there. She was influential in bringing the baseball Dodgers from Brooklyn, New York, to their new home in Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles...

    , chair and chief executive officer of the convention
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