Walter Mondale

Walter Mondale (1977)

Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale (born January 5, 1928 in Ceylon , Minnesota , † April 19, 2021 in Minneapolis , Minnesota) was an American politician of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party . He was the 42nd Vice President of the United States from 1977 to 1981 . In 1984 he was a Democratic presidential candidate , but lost to incumbent Ronald Reagan in the election .

Life

Walter Mondale graduated from the University of Minnesota with a law degree in 1956 . He then worked as a lawyer for the next four years . In 1958 he was the campaign manager for Governor Orville Freeman . In 1955 he married Joan Adams , with whom he had three children; she died in 2014 of complications from Alzheimer's disease . In 1960 he became Attorney General of Minnesota. From 1965 to 1976 he sat as a representative of his state in the US Senate . In his role as Senator, he was a member of the Senate investigative committee that dealt with the Apollo 1 disaster. Mondale was at this time an opponent of space travel and tried to stop the Apollo program through the committee of inquiry .

1976 he was appointed as his running mate of Jimmy Carter elected to the US Vice President. He took up this position on January 20, 1977. Unlike their immediate predecessors - Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller - Carter and Mondale worked closely together. In the 1980 presidential election , Mondale was again run as a candidate for the vice presidency alongside Carter. However, when he lost in a clear decision against Republican Ronald Reagan , Mondale returned to his practice as a lawyer . He resigned from the office of Vice President on January 20, 1981. He was succeeded by George HW Bush .

Walter Mondale (2014)

The Democratic Party nominated him as their candidate in the 1984 presidential election ; with Geraldine Ferraro , a woman applied for the vice-presidency at his side for the first time. Mondale is considered to be one of the best-informed presidential candidates of all time and announced that whoever is president in the next legislative period will have to raise taxes because of the large national deficit . The popular incumbent Reagan promised a balanced budget through growth without higher taxes and clearly held his own in office. Only a good 40 percent of the voters were in favor of Mondale, while Reagan was able to book just under 59 percent. In the electoral committee , the decision was even clearer, since Mondale only received a majority of votes and thus 13 electoral votes in his home state Minnesota and Washington, DC . Reagan won all other 49 states, a majority of 525 of the 538 electoral votes.

Mondale did not return to political office until 1993: the new Democratic US President Bill Clinton appointed him as the successor to Michael Armacost as the United States Ambassador to Japan . In 2002, Mondale returned to the political scene at short notice as a candidate for the US Senate after Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash. He narrowly lost the election in Minnesota to Republican Norm Coleman .

Mondale died in Minneapolis on April 19, 2021 at the age of 93.

ancestors

Mondale's ancestors came from Fjærland in Norway , where - like in many parts of western Norway - many had emigrated to the United States in the second half of the 19th century. His great-grandparents left Fjærland in 1858 with their eight-year-old son Ole, Mondale's grandfather. When they settled in the United States, they adapted the name spelling to English. Most of the inhabitants of Fjærland who live in the district of Mundal still bear the surname Mundal.

Mondale traveled to the homeland of his ancestors in 1986 to celebrate the opening of a new road tunnel connecting Fjærland with the northern region of Jølster .

literature

• Jules Witcover: The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power. Smithsonian Books, Washington, D. C. 2014, ISBN 978-1-5883-4471-7 , pp. 429-443 (= 42. Walter F. Mondale of Minnesota ).
• Walter F. Mondale & David Hage: The Good Fight: A Life in Liberal Politics. University of Minnesota Press, 2013; ISBN 978-0816691661

Web links

Commons : Walter Mondale  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Walter Mondale in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Walter Mondale in the nndb (English)
• Walter Mondale. University of Virginia Miller Center of Public Affairs, February 23, 2017. 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bart Barnes: Walter F. Mondale, Carter's vice president who lost White House bid, dies at 93. In: Washington Post . April 19, 2021, accessed April 20, 2021 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b} Walter F. Mondale, 42nd Vice President (1977–1981). In: senate.gov . Accessed April 20, 2021 .