Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 42nd vice president of the United States from 1977 to 1981 under President Jimmy Carter. He previously served as a U.S. senator from Minnesota from 1964 to 1976, he was the Democratic Party's nominee in the 1984 presidential election, but lost to incumbent Ronald Reagan in an Electoral College and popular vote landslide.
Mondale was born in Ceylon, Minnesota, and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1951 after attending Macalester College. He then served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War before earning a law degree in 1956. He married Joan Adams in 1955. Working as a lawyer in Minneapolis, Mondale was appointed Minnesota Attorney General in 1960 by Governor Orville Freeman and was elected to a full term as attorney general in 1962 with 60% of the vote. He was appointed to the U.S. Senate by Governor Karl Rolvaag upon the resignation of Senator Hubert Humphrey following Humphrey's election as vice president in 1964. Mondale was elected to a full Senate term in 1966 and reelected in 1972, resigning in 1976 as he prepared to succeed to the vice presidency in 1977. While in the Senate, he supported consumer protection, fair housing, tax reform and the desegregation of schools; he served on the Church Committee.
In 1976, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic presidential nominee, chose Mondale as his vice-presidential running mate. The Carter–Mondale ticket narrowly defeated the Republican ticket of incumbent president Gerald Ford and his running mate Bob Dole. The economy worsened during Carter and Mondale's time in office, and they lost the 1980 election to Republicans Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. In 1984, Mondale won the Democratic presidential nomination and campaigned for a nuclear freeze, the Equal Rights Amendment, an increase in taxes, and a reduction of U.S. public debt. His vice presidential nominee, U.S. Representative Geraldine Ferraro from New York, was the first female vice-presidential nominee of any major party in U.S. history. Mondale and Ferraro lost the election to the incumbents Reagan and Bush, with Reagan winning 49 states and Mondale carrying only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.
After his defeat, Mondale joined the Minnesota-based law firm Dorsey & Whitney and the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (1986–1993). President Bill Clinton appointed Mondale U.S. Ambassador to Japan in 1993; he retired from that post in 1996. In 2002, Mondale became the last-minute choice of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party to run for Senate after Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash less than two weeks before the election. Mondale narrowly lost the race to Saint Paul mayor Norm Coleman. He then returned to working at Dorsey & Whitney and remained active in the Democratic Party. Mondale later took up a part-time teaching position at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs.
