64 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • JANUARY 2021
REAR VIEW
GERALDINE FERRARO WINNING WOMEN
BY ANNIE WILKINSON
It’s said that the third time works the
charm, a phrase that proved true
during the recent presidential election:
For the third time, a woman ran for the
vice presidency, and for the first time,
a woman won. U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris
(D-Calif.) made history in November
2020 by being chosen the country’s
first woman vice president.
In her acceptance speech honoring
women candidates, Harris said she
stands on their shoulders: “I reflect on
their struggle, their determination and
the strength of their vision, to see what
can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Before Harris, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin,
a Republican, was the second female to
run for the office in the 2008 presidential
election; her bid failed.
But 24 years earlier, in 1984, a tough
New Yorker campaigned, the first
woman to gamble on becoming VP:
Geraldine Anne Ferraro. The New York
Times described how Ferraro “rocketed
to national prominence, propelled
by fervid feminist support, a spirited
and sometimes saucy personality, and
canny political skills.”
THE CANDIDATE
Ferraro was born in Newburgh, N.Y.,
in 1935. Her single mother was a determined
Italian immigrant who earned
money to send her daughter to good
schools by crocheting beads on wedding
dresses.
The child excelled early, skipping sixth
through eighth grades and earning a
scholarship to Marymount Manhattan
College at 16. After her 1956 graduation,
she taught elementary school in New
York City’s public schools. But she
sought more: Although female attorneys
were rare, she took night classes
at Fordham University and earned her
law degree in 1960. She married real
estate broker John Zaccaro a week later.
Working at his law firm part time
while raising three children, she spent
time with the family at a vacation home
in the tiny Village of Saltaire on Fire
Island.
In 1974 Ferraro was hired by her cousin,
then-Queens District Attorney
Nicholas Ferrarro, as an assistant
Gerladine Ferraro, who had a summer home in Saltaire, was the first female
vice presidential candidate on a major-party ticket. (Reuters/Peter Morgan)
district attorney, then transferred to
the new Special Victims Bureau investigating
sex crimes and child abuse; she
earned praise for tenacity and talent
in the courtroom, but found the work
draining. Citing unequal pay at the district
attorney’s office, she left in 1978 to
explore politics: the 9th Congressional
District.
Running on a successful platform
emphasizing her Italian background,
increased law and order, supporting
the elderly, and neighborhood preservation,
“Gerry” Ferraro became the
first Congresswoman from Queens and
was re-elected twice. She was seen as
the new face of feminism who used her
own last name professionally. “Her
subsequent rise to prominence helped
popularize the use of ‘Ms.’ as a title,”
wrote cityandstateny.com.
As another first, in 1984, Ferraro was
the first woman to chair the Democratic
Party Platform Committee. The
headlines exploded when Democratic
presidential candidate Walter Mondale
picked her as his running mate against
incumbent Republican President Ronald
Reagan.
Mondale later wrote, “I thought that
putting a woman on a major-party
ticket would change American expectations,
permanently and for the
better.” At the time, Ferraro said, “If
a woman can be vice president of the
U.S., what job is there that a woman
cannot do?”
Ferraro’s plain-talking, visionary
acceptance speech is remembered
as one of history’s finest political
speeches, laying out what she stood for:
pro-labor, reproductive rights, social
support systems for the elderly.
She said, “It isn’t right that every year,
the share of taxes paid by individual
citizens is going up, while the share
paid by large corporations is getting
smaller and smaller,” and “It isn’t right
that a woman should get paid 59 cents
on the dollar for the same work as a
man,” … “by the year 2000 nearly all
of the poor people in America will be
women and children.”
SURVIVING SCANDAL
Her candidacy was derailed three
weeks after that speech by accusations
against her husband.
The accusers’ ammunition fueled
attacks tying him to organized crime,
tax evasion, illegal loans, building violations
and more, all exacerbated by
his delay in releasing his income tax returns.
Some blamed anti-Italian-American
sentiment; then-Washington
Post Editor Ben Bradlee later told the
Los Angeles Times, “I don’t think the
press…would have put that kind of energy
into it if we’d been talking about
somebody called ‘Jenkins.’”
While most of the allegations were
unfounded, the party’s damage control
machine failed to polish her tarnished
reputation. President Reagan and Vice
President George H.W. Bush won in a
landslide.
After that, Ferraro ran for the Senate
twice but won neither race. She was appointed
U.S.ambassador to the United
Nations Human Rights Commission by
President Bill Clinton and campaigned
for presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.
She co-hosted CNN’s political talk
show Crossfire for two years.
She and her husband were married
for 50 years. She died of cancer at 75
in 2011, five years before their son John
Zaccaro Jr. was elected mayor of Saltaire
in 2016, a position he still holds.
“It isn’t right that every year, the share of taxes
paid by individual citizens is going up, while the
share paid by large corporations is getting smaller
and smaller,” said Geraldine Anne Ferraro.
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
/cityandstateny.com
