![]() Mondale’s entry into national politics came at the 1964 Democratic National Convention, when as chairman of a Credentials Committee subcommittee, he brokered an historic compromise between the segregated Mississippi delegation and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which had challenged the validity of the regular delegation as representatives of the state’s people. He also served as a member of the President’s Consumer Advisory Council (1960-1964). Wainwright, which established the right of indigent defendants in felony cases to receive court-appointed counsel. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Gideon v. Mondale’s four years as Minnesota attorney general saw several other initiatives of both state and national significance that broadened the office’s role as protector of the citizenry, including establishing separate consumer-protection, anti-trust, and civil rights units testing and expanding his legal authority in a suit against a predatory furnace-repair company and spearheading a brief by 22 state attorneys general that influenced the U.S. His instinct to serve as a thoughtful, hard-working “people’s lawyer” was given a fortuitous boost during his first months in office by the investigation and exposure of massive fraud in the fund raising activities of officials of the Sister Elizabeth Kenny Foundation. In May of 1960 Governor Freeman appointed Mondale to the post of Minnesota attorney general, following the contentious resignation of the incumbent, and he was elected to the post in his own right that fall. While earning a living as a lawyer in private practice, he also ran Freeman’s successful campaigns for governor of Minnesota in 19, continued his involvement in other aspects of DFL organization including serving as its state finance director, and gained a reputation as a first-rate political strategist. Senate, and as campaign manager for Orville Freeman’s unsuccessful but party-building run for Minnesota attorney general. He then returned to the University of Minnesota, graduating cum laude from its Law School in 1956.ĭuring his college years, Mondale was initiated into practical politics as a volunteer worker in Hubert Humphrey’s campaigns for mayor of Minneapolis, as an organizer for the liberal faction of Minnesota’s newly merged Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, as a field worker in Humphrey’s initial campaign for election to the U.S. Paul, working for a time as executive secretary of Students for Democratic Action in Washington, D.C., and then graduating from the University of Minnesota in 1951, he enlisted for a two-year stint in the U.S. After attending Macalester College in St. His father, Theodore, was a farmer and Methodist minister, and his mother, Claribel Cowen, a musician and piano teacher. Mondale was born in the small town of Ceylon, in southern Minnesota in 1928, and grew up in the equally small town of Elmore. ![]() His participation in a variety of public policy forums has helped to define choices and alternatives on a variety of issues, and to educate future leaders. As Presidential candidate, he made history by selecting Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, the first woman to appear on a major party presidential ticket. As Vice President, the nature of his working relationship with Jimmy Carter reshaped the character of that office. As Senator, he was instrumental in helping to achieve the passage of pivotal legislation on civil rights, consumer protection, education, child protection, and domestic surveillance as well enduring reforms of the Senate filibuster and congressional budget process. He is most commonly viewed as a traditional New Deal liberal, and this characterization is to a large extent accurate, but falls short of a full definition of the man and masks the significant role he played in helping to shape the political and public-policy scene of the last third of the 20th century. The trajectory of his career placed him at the center of transformations of the Democratic Party, American politics, and the character of the nation. A liberal Democrat and an influential strategist in Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, he has held the offices of Minnesota attorney general (1960-1964), United States Senator from Minnesota (1964-1976), Vice President of the United States (1977-1981), Democratic Party candidate for President (1984), and ambassador to Japan (1993-1996). Walter Frederick (“Fritz”) Mondale, a native Minnesotan, has spent most of his life in public service, at the state, national, and international levels.
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