MINNEAPOLIS (AP) – Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, a liberal icon who lost one of the most wasted presidential elections after bluntly telling voters to expect a tax hike if he won, died Monday. He was 93 years old.
The death of the former Minnesota senator, ambassador and attorney general was announced in a statement from his family. No cause was cited.
Mondale followed in the footsteps of his political mentor, Hubert H. Humphrey, from Minnesota politics to the United States Senate and vice presidency, serving as Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.
In a statement Monday night, Carter said he considered Mondale “the best vice president in our country’s history.” He added: “Fritz Mondale provided us all with a model of public service and private behavior.”
Mondale’s own attempt for the White House, in 1984, reached the culmination of Ronald Reagan’s popularity. His selection of New York representative Geraldine Ferraro as a running mate made him the first candidate for the presidency of the major party to put a woman on the ballot, but his statement that he would raise taxes helped to define the race.
On election day, it carried only its home state and the District of Columbia. The election vote was 525-13 for Reagan, the Electoral College’s biggest landslide since Franklin Roosevelt defeated Alf Landon in 1936. Senator George McGovern won 17 votes in his 1972 defeat. , winning Massachusetts and Washington, DC)
“I did my best,” Mondale said the day after the election and blamed no one but himself.
“I think you know I’ve never warmed up on TV,” he said. “To be fair in front of the TV, it never warmed me up much.”
Years later, Mondale said his campaign message had proven to be the right one.
“History has vindicated me that we should raise taxes,” he said. “It was very unpopular, but it was undeniably right.”
In 2002, state and national Democrats watched Mondale when Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., Died in a plane crash less than two weeks before election day. Mondale agreed to run for Wellstone and early polls showed him an advantage over Republican candidate Norm Coleman.
But Coleman, 53, highlighted his youth and vigor, beating Mondale, 74, in an intense six-day campaign. Mondale was also wounded by a supportive memorial service in Wellstone, in which thousands of Democrats applauded Republican politicians present. One speaker pleaded, “We ask you to help us win this election for Paul Wellstone.”
Polls showed the service postponed independents and cost Mondale votes. Coleman gained 3 percentage points.
“The compliments were the ones that hurt the most,” Mondale said after the election. “It simply came to our notice then. Now can’t we find in our heart to forgive them and move on? ”
It was a particularly bitter defeat for Mondale, who even after his defeat against Reagan had consoled himself in his perfect record in Minnesota.
“One of the things I’m most proud of,” he said in 1987, “is that not once in my public career have I ever lost the election in Minnesota.”
Years after the 2002 defeat, Mondale returned to the Senate to side with Democrat Al Franken in 2009, when he was sworn in to replace Coleman after a recount and a court battle.
Mondale began his career in Washington in 1964, when he was appointed to the Senate to replace Humphrey, who had resigned as vice president. Mondale was elected to a full six-year term with about 54% of the vote in 1966, even though Democrats lost government and suffered other electoral setbacks. In 1972, Mondale won another term in the Senate with almost 57% of the vote.
His career in the Senate was marked by the advocacy of social issues such as education, housing, migrant workers and child nutrition. Like Humphrey, he was a staunch defender of civil rights.
Mondale tested the waters to get a presidential candidacy in 1974, but eventually decided against it. “I basically found that I didn’t have the overwhelming desire to be president, which is essential to the kind of campaign that is required,” he said in November 1974.
In 1976, Carter chose Mondale as number 2 on his ticket and went on to defeat Gerald Ford.
As vice president, Mondale had a close relationship with Carter. He was the first vice president to hold an office in the White House, rather than in a building on the street. Mondale traveled extensively on behalf of Carter and advised him on domestic and foreign affairs.
Although he lacked Humphrey’s charisma, Mondale had a funny sense of humor.
When he left the 1976 presidential draw, he said, “I don’t want to spend the next two years at Holiday Inns.”
Recalling shortly before he was chosen as Carter’s running mate, Mondale said, “I’ve checked and seen that they’re all redecorated and that they’re wonderful places to stay.”
Mondale never strayed from his liberal principles.
“I think the country needs progressive values more than ever,” Mondale said in 1989.
That year, Democrats tried to persuade him to challenge Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, the governor of Minnesota, but he decided not to run, saying it was time to make way for a new generation.
“One of the requirements of a healthy party is for it to be renewed,” he said at the time. “You can’t keep running Walter Mondale for everything.”
This paved the way for Wellstone to win the Democratic nomination and continue to annoy Boschwitz. Wellstone had been preparing to face Mondale in a primary, but he would have been an understatement.
The son of a Methodist minister and a music teacher, Walter Frederick Mondale was born on January 5, 1928 in Little Ceylon, Minnesota, and grew up in several small towns in southern Minnesota.
He was only 20 when he served as congressional district manager for Humphrey’s successful Senate campaign in 1948. His training, interrupted by a two-year stint in the military, culminated in a law degree for the University of Minnesota in 1956.
Mondale began a law firm in Minneapolis and led the success of Democrat Orville Freeman’s 1958 government campaign, which appointed Mondale state attorney general in 1960. Mondale was elected attorney general to the state. fall of 1960 and was re-elected in 1962.
As Attorney General, Mondale quickly moved on to civil rights, antitrust, and consumer protection cases. He was the first Minnesota attorney general to make consumer protection a campaign issue.
After his years in the White House, Mondale served from 1993 to 1996 as President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Japan, fighting for U.S. access to markets ranging from cars to cell phones.
He helped avert a trade war in June 1995 over cars and auto parts, persuading Japanese officials to give American car manufacturers more access to Japanese dealers, and pushed Japanese manufacturers to buy parts in the U.S.
Mondale maintained his ties to the Clintons. In 2008, he approved Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as president, changing her allegiance only after Barack Obama sealed the nomination.
When Democrats came to him after Wellstone’s death, Mondale worked at the Minneapolis, Dorsey & Whitney law firm, and worked on boards of companies and nonprofits. He returned to the firm after the brief campaign.
Mondale and his wife, Joan Adams Mondale, married in 1955. During his vice presidency, he pushed for greater support from the arts government and earned the nickname “Joan of Art.” He had studied art at university and worked at museums in Boston and Minneapolis.
The couple had two children, Ted and William, and a daughter, Eleanor. Eleanor Mondale became a journalist and television presenter, with credits such as “CBS This Morning” and programs with E! Entertainment Television. Ted Mondale served six years in the Minnesota Senate and made an unsuccessful candidacy for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1998. William Mondale served for a time as deputy attorney general.
Joan Mondale died in 2014 at the age of 83 after a prolonged illness.
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Former Associated Press writer Brian Bakst contributed to this report.