Walter Mondale

Walter Mondale
42nd Vice-President of the United States
Term of office January 20, 1977 - January 20, 1981
Political party	Democratic
President	Jimmy Carter
Preceded by	Nelson Rockefeller
Succeeded by	George H. W. Bush
Born	January 5, 1928 Ceylon, Minnesota
Spouse	Joan Adams Mondale (died 2014)

Walter Frederick Mondale (1928–present) is a former U.S. senator from Minnesota who served as vice president under U.S. President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. In 1984, as the former vice president, Mondale was the Democratic Party nominee for President. An avowed liberal, Mondale was defeated by the incumbent Ronald Reagan. Mondale carried only his home state and the District of Columbia. He is the only person in history to have lost a statewide election as the nominee of a major party in all fifty states, having lost the 2002 senatorial election in Minnesota and the 1984 presidential election in the other forty-nine.

Secular humanist

Author Tim LaHaye, in The Battle for the Mind, A Subtle Warfare recounts Mondale's humanist background. Mondale was a contributor to The Humanist magazine and attended the 5th Congress of the International Humanist and Ethical Union held in August 1970 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At that conference, then Senator Mondale said: "Although I have never formally joined a humanist society, I think I am a member by inheritance. My preacher father was a humanist ... and I grew up on a very rich diet of humanism from him. All of our family has been deeply influenced by this tradition including my brother Lester, a Unitarian minister ..." Indeed Robert Lester Mondale (1904-2003), Walter Mondale's older half-brother, was the only person to sign each of the three Humanist Manifestos in 1933, 1973, and 2003.

1984 Defeat

Mondale's defeat was by the largest margin since the 1930s, worse even than George McGovern's in 1972. While Mondale's defeat is striking, the campaign is also notable because it was the first time a woman was included on a major party's ticket. Geraldine Ferraro was selected as his Vice Presidential candidate.

2002 Campaign

In 2002 Mondale ran for the Senate again as the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota to succeed the late Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash eleven days before the election. Mondale lost to Republican Norm Coleman, who in turn was narrowly unseated in 2008 by the liberal comedian Al Franken.

External links

• http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=m000851