Walter Mondale

Biography

Walter Mondale was born in 1928 in Ceylon, Minnesota, the son of a Methodist minister, and grew up poor during the Depression. He attended Macalester College, graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1951, served stateside in the Army during the Korean War, and took a law degree at Minnesota in 1956.

A protege of Hubert Humphrey and Orville Freeman, he was appointed Minnesota attorney general in 1960 and in December 1964 was appointed to Humphrey's vacated Senate seat, winning election in his own right in 1966 and 1972. In the Senate he was a chief sponsor of the fair housing provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and served on the Church Committee investigating the intelligence agencies.

As Jimmy Carter's running mate he won the 1976 election and served as vice president from 1977 to 1981, before the ticket lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980. In 1984 he was the Democratic presidential nominee, choosing Geraldine Ferraro as the first woman on a major-party ticket, and lost to Reagan in a landslide, carrying only Minnesota and Washington, D.C.

He later practised law at Dorsey & Whitney, was ambassador to Japan from 1993 to 1996, lost a late Senate bid in 2002 after Paul Wellstone's death, and taught at the University of Minnesota. He died in 2021.