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Geraldine Anne Ferraro (born August 26, 1935) is an American attorney, a Democratic politician and a former member of the United States House of Representatives. She was the first female Vice Presidential candidate representing a major American political party.
Ferraro grew up in New York and became a teacher and lawyer. In 1974 she joined the Queens County District Attorney's Office, where she headed the new Special Victims Bureau that dealt with sex crimes, child abuse, and domestic violence. She was elected to Congress in 1978, 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.
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Geraldine Anne Ferraro (born August 26, 1935) is an American attorney, a Democratic politician and a former member of the United States House of Representatives. She was the first female Vice Presidential candidate representing a major American political party.
Ferraro grew up in New York and became a teacher and lawyer. In 1974 she joined the Queens County District Attorney's Office, where she headed the new Special Victims Bureau that dealt with sex crimes, child abuse, and domestic violence. She was elected to Congress in 1978, 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 candidate Walter Mondale selected Ferraro to be his running mate in the upcoming election. In doing so she also became the only Italian American to be a major-party national nominee. The positive polling Mondale received when she joined him did not last until November, and they were defeated in an electoral landslide by incumbent President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush.
She ran campaigns for a seat in the United States Senate in 1992 and 1998, both times emerging as the front-runner for her party's nomination, but she lost in the primaries both times. She served as a United States Ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights from 1993 until 1996 in the Presidential administration of Bill Clinton. She has also continued her career as a journalist, author, and businesswoman, and served in the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Early life and education
Ferraro was born in Newburgh, New York, the daughter of parents Antonetta L. (n้e Corrieri), a first-generation Italian American seamstress, and Dominick Ferraro, an Italian immigrant and owner of two restaurants. Geraldine had three older brothers, two of whom died early in life one in infancy and one at age three. She attended the parochial Mount Saint Mary's in Newburgh. Geraldine's father died of a heart attack in May 1944, when she was eight. Geraldine's mother soon invested and lost the remainder of the family's money, and she was forced to move the family to a low income area in the South Bronx while she worked in the garment industry to support them.
Geraldine stayed on at Mount Saint Mary's as a boarder for a while, then went to parochial school in the South Bronx briefly. Beginning in 1947, Ferraro attended and lived at the parochial Marymount Academy in Tarrytown, New York, using income from a rental property in Italy and skipping seventh grade. At Marymount Academy she was a member of the honor society, active in several clubs and sports, and voted most likely to succeed; she graduated in 1952. Her mother was adamant that she get a full education. Ferraro attended Marymount Manhattan College with a scholarship, sometimes holding two or three jobs at the same time. In her senior year she began dating John Zaccaro of Forest Hills, New York, 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 also passed the city exam to become a licensed school teacher.
Ferraro began working as an elementary school teacher in public schools in Astoria, Queens, "because that's what women were supposed to do." Unsatisfied, she decided to attend law school; an admissions officer said to her, "I hope you're serious, Gerry. You're taking a man's place, you know." She earned a Juris Doctor degree with honors from Fordham University School of Law in 1960, going to classes at night while continuing to work as a second-grade teacher at schools such as P.S. 57 during the day. Ferraro was one of only two women in her graduating class of 179. She was admitted to the bar of New York State in March 1961.
Family, lawyer, prosecutor
Ferraro became engaged to Zaccaro in August 1959. She married him on July 16, 1960; he became a realtor and businessman. She kept her birth name professionally, as a way to honor her mother for having supported the family after her father's death. They have three children, Donna (born 1962), John Jr. (born 1964), and Laura (born 1966).
While raising the children, Ferraro worked part-time as a civil lawyer in her husband's real estate firm for 13 years. She occasionally worked for other clients and did 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 with local politics and campaigns. In 1970, she was elected president of the Queens County Women's Bar Association.
Ferraro's first major political job came in January 1974 when she was appointed Assistant District Attorney for Queens County, New York by her cousin, District Attorney Nicholas Ferraro. At the time, women prosecutors in the city were uncommon. In 1975, she was assigned to the new Special Victims Bureau, which prosecuted cases involving rape, child abuse, spouse abuse, and domestic violence. She was then named head of the unit in 1977, with two other assistant district attorneys assigned to her. In this role, she became a strong advocate for abused children. She was admitted to the U.S. Supreme Court Bar in 1978.
In the D.A. office, Ferraro worked long hours, and gained a reputation for being tough but fair. Although her unit was supposed to turn over cases for prosecution, she conducted some trials herself, and juries were persuaded by her summations. Ferraro discovered to her dissatisfaction that her superior was paying her less than her equivalent male colleagues because she was a married woman and already had a husband. Moreover, Ferraro found the nature of the cases she dealt with debilitating; the work left her "drained and angry" and she developed an ulcer. She grew frustrated that she was unable to deal with root causes, and talked about running for legislative office.
House of Representatives
Ferraro ran for election to the House of Representatives from New York's 9th Congressional District in Queens in 1978, after longtime Democratic incumbent James Delaney announced his retirement. The district was known for its ethnic composition and conservative views, and was where the television series All in the Family was fictionally located. In a three-candidate primary race for the Democratic nomination, Ferraro faced two better-known rivals, including the party organization candidate, City Councilman Thomas J. Manton. Her main issues were law and order, support for the elderly, and neighborhood preservation. She labeled herself a "'small c' conservative" and emphasized that she was not a bleeding-heart liberal; her campaign slogan was "Finally, A Tough Democrat". Her Italian heritage also benefited her. She won the three-way primary with a clear majority of the vote, and then won the general election as well, defeating Republican Alfred A. DelliBovi by a 54 to 44 percent margin in a contest in which dealing with crime was the major issue and personal attacks by DelliBovi were frequent. In her successful run, she was aided by some $130,000 in campaign funds from her own family, including $110,000 in loans from her husband. The source and nature of these transactions were declared illegal by the Federal Election Commission shortly before the primary, causing Ferraro to pay back the loans in October 1978 via several real estate transactions. In 1979, the campaign and her husband paid $750 in fines for civil violations of election law.
Despite being a newcomer to the House, Ferraro made a vivid impression upon arrival and quickly began achieving prominence. She became a prot้g้ of House Speaker Tip O'Neil established a rapport with other House Democratic leaders, and rose rapidly in the party hierarchy. She was elected to be the Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus for 19811983 and again for 19831985; this entitled her to a seat on the influential Steering and Policy Committee. In 1983 she was named to the powerful House Budget Committee. She also served on the Public Works and Transportation Committee and the Post Office and Civil Service Committee, both of which allowed her to push through projects to benefit her district. Male colleagues viewed her with respect as someone who was tough and ambitious.
Ferraro was active in Democratic presidential politics as well. In 1980 she served as one of the deputy chairs for the Carter-Mondale campaign. Following the election, she served actively on the Hunt Commission that in 1982 rewrote the Democratic delegate selection rules; Ferraro was credited as having been the prime agent behind the creation of superdelegates. She was the Chairwoman of the Platform Committee for the 1984 Democratic National Convention, the first woman to hold that position. There she held multiple hearings around the country and further gained in visibility.
While in Congress, Ferraro focussed much of her legislative attention on equity for women in the areas of wages, pensions, and retirement plans. She was a cosponsor of the 1981 Economic Equity Act. On the House Select Committee on Aging, she concentrated on the problems of elderly women. In 1984, she championed a pension equity law revision that would improve the benefits of people who left work for long periods and then returned, a typical case for women with families. The Reagan administration, at first lukewarm to the measure, decided to sign it to gain the benefits of its popular appeal.
Ferraro also worked on some environmental issues. In 1980, she tried to prevent the federal government from having power to override local laws on hazardous materials transportation, an effort she continued in subsequent years. In August 1984, she led passage of a Superfund renewal bill, and attacked the Reagan administration's handling of environment site cleanups.
Ferraro took a congressional trip to Nicaragua in January 1984, where she spoke to the Contras, and decided that the Reagan Administration's military interventions there and in El Salvador were counterproductive towards reaching U.S. security goals, and that regional negotiations would be better.
In all, Ferraro served three two-year terms, being re-elected in 1980 and 1982, with her vote shares increasing to 58 percent and then 73 percent, respectively and much of her funding coming from political action committees. While her pro-choice views conflicted with those of many of her constituents as well as the Catholic Church to which she belonged, her positions on other social and foreign policy issues were in alignment with her district. She favored deployment of the Pershing II missile and the Trident submarine, and an anti-busing amendment to the Constitution.
While in the House, Ferraro's political self-description evolved to "moderate". In 1982, she said her experiences as assistant district attorney had changed some of her views: "... because no matter how concerned I am about spending, I have seen first hand what poverty can do to people's lives and I just can't, in good conscience, not do something about it." For her six years in Congress, Ferraro had an average 78 percent "Liberal Quotient" from Americans for Democratic Action; for the same period, she had an average 8 percent rating from the American Conservative Union. The AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education gave her an average approval rating of 91 percent.
1984 Vice-Presidential candidacy
As the 1984 U.S. presidential election primary season wound down and Walter Mondale became the likely Democratic nominee, the idea of picking a woman as his vice-presidential running mate gained considerable attention. The National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus pushed the notion, as did several top Democratic figures such as Speaker O'Neill. Women mentioned for the role included Ferraro and Mayor of San Francisco Dianne Feinstein, both of whom were on Mondale's five-person short list.
Mondale selected Geraldine Ferraro to be his Vice-Presidential candidate on July 12, 1984, and Ferraro stated, "I am absolutely thrilled." The Mondale campaign was wagering that her selection would shake up a race in which he was a decided underdog; in addition to attracting women, they were hoping that she could attract ethnic Democrats in the Northeast U.S., who had abandoned their party for Reagan in 1980. In turn, Mondale was accepting the risk that came with her inexperience.
As Ferraro was the first woman to run on a major party national ticket in the U.S., her July 19 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 her speech, not just for its significance for women but for all those who had immigrated to America.
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. 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. Mondale had been 16 points behind Reagan in polls before the pick, and after the convention he pulled even for a short time.
But by the last week of July, questions were simmering about Ferraro's finances, those of her husband, and their separately filed tax returns. (While the Mondale campaign had anticipated some questions, the drawn-out vice-presidential selection process had not fully vetted her on this aspect.) Ferraro said that she would release both their returns within a month, but maintained that she was correct not to have included her husband's financial holdings on her past annual Congressional disclosure statements. Notice of the FEC's past investigation into Ferraro's 1978 campaign funds also came to light. On August 12, she announced that her husband would not in fact be releasing his tax returns, on the grounds that to do so would disadvantage his real estate business and that such a disclosure was voluntary and not part of election law; she then quipped, "You people who are married to Italian men, you know what it's like."
This development dominated television and newspapers; Ferraro was besieged by questions regarding the finances as well as criticism for ethnic stereotyping. As she later wrote, "I had created a monster." Republicans saw her finances as a "genderless" issue that they could attack Ferraro with without creating a backlash. A week later, Ferraro said her husband had changed his mind and would release his tax records, which was done on August 20. 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. Ferraro said the statements proved overall that she had nothing to hide and that there had been no financial wrongdoing.
Ferraro's strong performance at the press conference covering the final disclosure effectively put the issue behind her for the remainder of the campaign, but significant damage had been done. No campaign issue during the entire 1984 presidential campaign received more media attention than Ferraro's finances. The exposure would have the effect of diminishing Ferraro's rising stardom, removing whatever momentum the MondaleFerraro ticket gained out of the convention, and delaying the formation of a coherent message for the fall campaign.
As a Catholic, Ferraro also came under fire from some members of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church for being pro-choice on abortion; that issue would have her on the defensive during the entire campaign. Nevertheless, Ferraro resumed her role as a strong campaigner, taking on the traditional running mate role of attacking the opposition vigorously, but also drawing large crowds witnessing the historic moment and chanting, "Ger-ry! Ger-ry!" Mondale and Ferraro rarely touched during their appearances together, to the point that he wouldn't 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 1984 campaign vice-presidential debate between Congresswoman Ferraro and Vice President George H. W. Bush. It was held on October 11, and the result was proclaimed mostly even by the press and historians; women voters tended to think Ferraro had won, while men, Bush. Ferraro criticized Reagan's actions of refusing to support the Voting Rights Act. Her experience was questioned at the debate and she was asked how her three terms in Congress stacked up with Bush's experience. To one Bush statement she said, "Let me just say first of all, that I almost resent, Vice President Bush, your patronizing attitude that you have to teach me about foreign policy." She strongly defended her position on abortion, which earned her applause and a respectful reply from her opponent. 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-dollarI cant say it, but it rhymes with 'rich'"; Barbara Bush soon apologized. Ferraro's sex was a steady presence during the campaign; one study found that 27 percent of newspaper articles written about her contained gendered language.
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. Ferraro failed to carry her own congressional district, which always tended to vote Republican in presidential races. Ferraro's presence on the ticket had little measurable effect overall. Reagan won 55 percent of women voters, while of the 10 percent of voters who decided based on the vice-presidential candidates, 54 percent went to MondaleFerraro, establishing that Ferraro provided a net gain to the Democrats of 0.8 percent. Reagan's personal appeal and campaign themes of prosperity and "It's morning again in America" were too strong; 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 said, "I consider myself completely vindicated."
Ferraro is one of only two U.S. women to run on a major party national ticket. The other is Alaska governor Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, whose ticket also lost.
First Senate run and ambassadorship
Ferraro had relinquished her House seat to run for the vice-presidency. Her fame led to her appearing in a Diet Pepsi commercial in 1985. She published Ferraro: My Story, an account of the campaign with some of her life leading up to it, in November 1985. It was a best seller and earned her $1 million. She earned over $300,000 by giving speeches. She founded the Americans Concerned for Tomorrow political action committee, which focused on getting ten women candidates elected in the 1986 Congressional elections (eight of whom would be successful). Despite the one-sided national loss in 1984, Ferraro was still viewed as someone with a bright political future. Many expected her to run in the 1986 United States Senate election in New York against first-term Republican incumbent Al D'Amato, and during 1985 she did Upstate New York groundwork towards that end. Indeed, this had been her original plan for her career, before she was named to Mondale's ticket. But in December 1985, she said she would not run, due to the overhanging cloud from an ongoing U.S. Justice Department probe on her and her husband's finances stemming from the 1984 campaign revelations.
Members of Ferraro's family were indeed facing legal issues. In January 1985, her husband John Zaccaro had pleaded guilty to fraudulently obtain bank financing in a real estate transaction and had been sentenced to 150 hours of community service. Then in October 1986, 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. Meanwhile, in February 1986, the couple's son John had been arrested for possession and sale of cocaine. He was convicted, and in June 1988 sentenced to four months imprisonment, as Ferraro broke down in tears in court relating the stress the episode had placed on her family. Ferraro worked on an unpublished book about the conflicting rights between a free press and being able to have fair trials.
Ferraro remained active in raising money for Democratic candidates nationwide, and especially women candidates. During the 1988 presidential election, Ferraro served as vice chair of the party's Victory Fund. She also did some commentating for television. Ferraro became a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics in 1988 teaching in-demand seminars such as "So You Want to be President?" a role she maintained until 1992. She also took care of her mother, who suffered from emphysema for several years before her death in early 1990.
By October 1991, Ferraro was ready to enter elective politics again, as she was running for the Democratic nomination in the 1992 United States Senate election in New York. Her opponents were State Attorney General Robert Abrams, Rev. Al Sharpton, Congressman Robert J. Mrazek, and New York City Comptroller and former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman. Abrams was considered the early front-runner. The D'Amato campaign feared facing Ferraro the most among these, as her Italian ancestry, effective debating and stump speech skills, and her staunch pro-choice views would eat into several of D'Amato's usual bases of support.
Ferraro drew renewed attacks during the primary campaign from the media and her opponents over her husband's finances and business relationships. She rebuffed the charges strongly, objecting that a male candidate would not receive nearly as much attention regarding his wife's activities. Ferraro became the front-runner, capitalizing on her star power from 1984 and her use of the campaign attacks against her as an explicitly feminist rallying point for women voters. As the primary date neared, her lead began to dwindle under the charges, and she released additional tax returns from the 1980s to try to defray the attacks; the final debates were nasty, and Holtzman in particular was constantly attacking Ferraro's integrity and finances. On the September 15, 1992 primary, Abrams edged out Ferraro by less than percentage point, winning 37 percent of the vote to 36 percent. Abrams spent much of the remainder of the campaign trying to get Ferraro's endorsement. Ferraro, overwhelmed with bitterness after the nature of the primary, ignored Abrams and accepted Bill Clinton's request to campaign for his presidential bid instead. She was eventually coerced by state party leaders into giving an endorsement with just three days to go before the general election, which D'Amato won by a very narrow margin.
Following her primary loss, Ferraro became 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 United Nations Commission on Human Rights in January 1993. She attended the June 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna as the alternate U.S. delegate. Then in October 1993, Clinton promoted her to be head of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights delegation, with the rank of United States Ambassador, 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 September 1995 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." Ferraro held the U.N. position into 1996.
Commentator and second Senate run
In February 1996, Ferraro joined the high-visibility CNN political talk show Crossfire, as the co-host representing the "from the left" vantage. Her New York accent still intact, she fit in well with the program's format, sparring effectively with "from the right" co-host Pat Buchanan, for whom she developed a personal liking. The show stayed strong in ratings for CNN, and the job was lucrative for her. She said she welcomed how the role "keeps me visible [and] it keeps me extremely well informed on the issues."
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. Her opponents were Congressman Charles Schumer and New York City Public Advocate Mark J. Green. 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; indeed, December and January polls had her 25 percentage points ahead of Green in the race and even further ahead of Schumer. Unlike the previous campaigns, her family finances never became an issue. However, she lost ground during the summer, with Schumer catching her in the polls by early August and then soon passing her. 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 September 15, 1998 primary, she was beaten soundly by Schumer with a 51 percent to 26 percent margin. Unlike 1992, the contest was not divisive, and Ferraro and third-place finisher Green endorsed Schumer at a unity breakfast the following day. 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." She still retained admirers, though. Anita Perez Ferguson, president of the National Women's Political Caucus, noted that female New York political figures in the past had been reluctant to enter the states's notoriously fierce primary races, and said: "This woman has probably been more of an opinion maker than most people sitting for six terms straight in the House of Representatives or Senate. Her attempts, and even her losses, have accomplished far beyond what others have accomplished by winning."
Business career
Ferraro had felt unusually tired at the end of her senate campaign. In November 1998, Ferraro was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a form of cancer where plasma cells secrete abnormal antibodies known as Bence-Jones proteins. She did not publicly disclose her illness until June 2001, when she went to Washington to successfully press in Congressional hearings for passage of the Hematological Cancer Research Investment and Education Act. She became a frequent speaker on the disease, and an avid supporter and honorary board member of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation. Though initially given only three to five years to live, by virtue of several new drug therapies and a bone marrow transplant, she has beaten the disease's Stage 1 survival mean of 62 months by a factor of two. She is not in remission, but the disease is managed through continually adjusting her treatments.
In October 1999, Ferraro joined Fox News Channel as a regular political commentator. By 2005 she was making sporadic appearances on the channel, which continued into 2007 and beyond. She partnered with Laura Ingraham, starting in December 1999, in writing the alternate-weeks column "Campaign Countdown" on the 2000 presidential election for The New York Times Syndicate. During the 2000s, Ferraro was an affiliated faculty member at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute.
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 co-founded, and served as co-presidents of, G&L Strategies, a management consulting firm underneath Weber McGinn, whose 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. In June 2003, Ferraro was made executive vice president and managing director of the public affairs practice of the Global Consulting Group, an international investor relations and corporate communications component of Huntsworth. There she worked with corporations, non-profit organizations, state governments and political figures. She continues there as a senior advisor working about two days a month.
Ferraro became a principal in the government relations practice of the Blank Rome law firm in February 2007, working both in New York and Washington about two days a week in their lobbying and communications activities. As she passed the age of 70, she was thankful for still being alive, and said This is about as retired as I get, which is part time, and that if she fully retired, she would "go nuts".
Ferraro has been a member of the board of directors of Goodrich Petroleum since August 2003. She was also a board member for New York Bancorp in the 1990s.
In 1980, Ferraro co-founded the National Organization of Italian American Women, which sought to support the educational and professional goals of its members and put forward positive role models in order to fight ethnic stereotyping. She continues to be a member of its board. Ferraro has been connected with many other political and non-profit organizations.
She is a board member of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
In 1989, she became president of the newly established International Institute for Women's Political Leadership.
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.
In 1999 she joined the board of the Bertarelli Foundation,
and in 2003, the board of the National Women's Health Resource Center.
In the 2000s she has been on the board of advisors to the Committee to Free Lori Berenson.
After living for many years in Forest Hills Gardens, Queens, she and her husband moved to Manhattan in 2002.
2008 presidential campaign involvement
In December 2006, Ferraro announced her support for presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. Later, she vowed to help defend Clinton from being "swiftboated" in a manner akin to 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry, and assisted with fundraising, with an honorary post on the finance committee for Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign. A heated nomination battle emerged between Clinton and Barack Obama, in which racial dust-ups caused by perceptions of remarks made by campaign surrogates took place.
Ferraro put herself into the same, via a March 2008 interview with the small California newspaper Daily Breeze in which she said: "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept." Ferraro had made a similar comment in 1988 about Jesse Jackson's presidential candidacy. Ferraro justified her statements by referring to her own run for vice president, saying 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." Her comments drew criticism and charges of racism from many supporters of Obama and Obama called them "patently absurd". Clinton publicly expressed disagreement with Ferraro's remarks, while Ferraro vehemently denied she was a racist. Again speaking to the Breeze, Ferraro responded to the attacks on her by saying: "I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?" Ferraro resigned from Clinton's finance committee on March 12, 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; she said, "This has been the worst three weeks of my life." Ferraro stated in mid-May 2008 that Clinton had "raised this whole woman candidate thing to a whole different level than when I ran". She thought Obama had behaved in a sexist manner and that she might not vote for him.
In 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. 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. In a friendly joint retrospective of her 1984 debate with George H.W. Bush, she 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]." Ferraro later applauded President-elect Obama's choice of Clinton for U.S. Secretary of State.
Books authored
In 1985 she published an account of her vice-presidential campaign, Ferraro: My Story, that also included some descriptions of her life until then. It was republished in 2004 with a postscript summarizing her life in the twenty years since the campaign.
Her second book, a collection of her speeches, was titled Changing History: Women, Power and Politics and was published in 1993.
Framing a Life: A Family Memoir, her 1998 book, is 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.
Awards and honors
Ferraro was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.
Ferraro received a number of honorary degrees during the 1980s and early 1990s, including 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).
Electoral history
Democratic primary for New York's 9th congressional district, 1978
New York's 9th congressional district, 1978
- Geraldine Ferraro (D) - 51,350 (54.17%)
- Alfred A. DelliBovi (R) - 42,108 (44.42%)
- Theodore E. Garrison (Liberal) - 1,329 (1.40%)
New York's 9th congressional district, 1980
- 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%)
New York's 9th congressional district, 1982
- Geraldine Ferraro (D) (Inc.) - 75,286 (73.22%)
- John J. Weigandt - 20,352 (19.79%)
- Ralph G. Groves (Conservative) - 6,011 (5.85%)
- Patricia A. Salargo (Liberal) - 1,171 (1.14%)
1984 Democratic National Convention (Vice-Presidential tally)
United States presidential election, 1984
Democratic primary for the United States Senate, 1992
Democratic primary for the United States Senate, 1998
- Chuck Schumer - 388,701 (50.84%)
- Geraldine Ferraro - 201,625 (26.37%)
- Mark Green - 145,819 (19.07%)
- Eric Ruano-Melendez - 28,493 (3.73%)
Source:
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