Geraldine Anne Ferraro (August 26, 1935 – March 26, 2011) was an American politician, diplomat, and attorney who served as a United States Representative from New York from 1979 to 1985, and was the Democratic Party's vice presidential nominee in 1984, running alongside former vice president Walter Mondale, which made her the first female vice-presidential nominee representing a major American political party.
She was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives 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 Mondale, seen as an underdog, selected Ferraro to be his running mate in the upcoming election, becoming the first female nominee for a major party to run for either president or vice-president. Ferraro also became the first widely recognized Italian American to be a major-party national nominee.note The positive polling the Mondale-Ferraro ticket received when she joined soon faded, however, as damaging questions arose about her and her businessman husband's finances and wealth and her Congressional disclosure statements. In the general election, Mondale and Ferraro were defeated in a landslide by incumbent President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H. W. Bush.
Ferraro ran campaigns for a seat in the United States Senate from New York in 1992 and 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 administration of Bill Clinton. She also continued to work as a journalist, author, and businesswoman, and served in the 2008 presidential campaign of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Ferraro died on March 26, 2011 from multiple myeloma, 12 years after being diagnosed.
In Media
Live-Action Television- Saturday Night Live: She was portrayed by Mary Gross during the 1984 presidential elections.
