Liberal stalwart served as Carter’s vice president.
WALTER MONDALE 1928-2021
MINNEAPOLIS — Former Vice President Walter Mondale, a liberal icon who lost the most lopsided presidential election after bluntly telling voters to expect a tax increase if he won, died Monday in Minneapolis. He was 93.
The death of the former senator, ambassador and Minnesota attorney general was announced in a statement from his family. No cause was cited.
Mondale followed the trail blazed by his political mentor, Hubert Humphrey, from Minnesota politics to the U.S. Senate and the vice presidency, serving under 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 for public service and private behavior.”
Mondale’s own try for the White House, in 1984, came at the zenith of Ronald Reagan’s popularity. His selection of Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate made him the first majorparty presidential nominee to put a woman on the ticket, but his declaration that he would raise taxes helped define the race.
On election day, he carried only his home state and the District of Columbia. The electoral vote was 52513 for Reagan — the biggest landslide in the Electoral College since Franklin Roosevelt defeated Alf Landon in 1936. (Sen. George McGovern got 17 electoral votes in his 1972 defeat, winning Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.)
“I did my best,” Mondale said the day after the election, and blamed no one but himself.
“I think you know I’ve never really warmed up to television,” he said. “In fairness to television, it never really warmed up to me.”
Mondale began his career in Washington in 1964 when he was appointed to the Senate to replace Humphrey, who had resigned to become vice president. Mondale was elected to a full sixyear term in 1966. In 1972, Mondale won reelection.
His Senate career was marked by advocacy of social issues such as education, housing, migrant workers and child nutrition. Like Humphrey, he was an outspoken supporter of civil rights.
Mondale tested the waters for a presidential bid in 1974 but ultimately decided against it. In 1976, Carter chose Mondale as No. 2 on his ticket and went on to unseat Gerald Ford.
As vice president, Mondale had a close relationship with Carter. He was the first vice president to occupy an office in the White House, rather than in a building across the street. Mondale traveled extensively on Carter’s behalf, and advised him on domestic and foreign affairs.
Over his lifetime, Mondale never backed away from his liberal principles.
“I think that the country more than ever needs progressive values,” he said in 1989.
The son of a Methodist minister and a music teacher, Walter Frederick Mondale was born Jan. 5, 1928, in tiny Ceylon, Minn. He was only 20 when he served as a congressional district manager for Humphrey’s successful Senate campaign in 1948. His education, interrupted by a twoyear stint in the Army, culminated with a law degree from the University of Minnesota.
Mondale began a law practice in Minneapolis and ran the successful 1958 gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Orville Freeman, who appointed Mondale state attorney general in 1960.
After his White House years, Mondale served from 199396 as President Bill Clinton’s ambassador to Japan, fighting for U.S. access to markets.
Mondale’s wife, Joan, died in 2014. The couple had two sons, Ted and William, and a daughter, Eleanor.