The Rising Star from Queens

By Alessandra Stanley

"If I weren 't capable, I wouldn 't be talked about"

The traffic was maddening on the Long Island side of New York City's Queensboro Bridge, with motorists darting heedlessly into a crowded intersection. The ensuing gridlock trapped a long gray sedan with VIP license plates. A frosted blond head poked out of the backseat window. "You are a stupid man!" she shouted at a driver who had cut her off. "You are a stupid man!" Then she got out of the car and rushed into the middle of the snarled intersection. Ignoring honks, raised fists and remarks far ruder than her own, she demanded that this car back up, that one turn right. One driver recognized her and yelled, "You tell 'em, Gerri!" Slowly the traffic jam cleared. The Congresswoman from Queens was back on schedule, racing to a Knights of Columbus testimonial dinner.

Any New Yorker loathes traffic, and Geraldine Ferraro, 48, is no exception. But the bold aplomb needed to take charge is all her own. Aplomb took her from teaching school to learning law, from an assistant prosecutor's job to a prominent position in Congress. It could, if the timing and political climate were precisely right, put her on the Democratic ticket in July. No less a figure than House Speaker Tip O'Neill is touting her vice-presidential chances. "Sure, I have a candidate," he told reporters. "Her name is Geraldine Ferraro."

Ferraro has been on a very fast track ever since she went to Washington in 1979 as a new Congresswoman from Archie Bunker's district. Eager to work her way up from lowly assignments like the Post Office and Civil Service Committee, Ferraro uncomplainingly attended 8 a.m. meetings, took on tedious tasks and carefully cultivated the Democratic leadership. O'Neill became her champion. With his blessing she was elected secretary of the Democratic caucus, a job traditionally reserved for a woman. In her third term, O'Neill put her on the powerful House Budget Committee, bypassing more senior members.

In 1981 Ferraro was appointed to the Hunt commission, created to overhaul the party's presidential nominating procedures. It was Ferraro who drafted the compromise that set aside 14% of the seats at the convention for party and elected officials. Shrewdly refraining from endorsing any of the Democratic presidential candidates, Ferraro asked for and got an election-year plum: chairmanship of the highly visible Democratic platform committee.

If she got help from O'Neill in all these promotions, Ferraro brought talent to the tasks and early won the respect of House colleagues. She showed herself to be an organization Democrat who, despite her evident ambition, played by the rules. She loyally supported Jimmy Carter after he sent his mother Lillian to Queens to stump on Ferraro's behalf. "When someone does something for me," Ferraro says, "I don't forget." Congressman Leon Panetta, a California Democrat, vouches for her political savvy. "She doesn't shoot from the hip," he says. "She's sensitive to issues and their various ramifications."

She made a rare misstep earlier this month, one that stemmed from her tendency to put the Democratic Party first and foremost. At a breakfast meeting with reporters, she said the platform committee would draft a succinct thematic document, avoiding controversial planks "that can be used against us." She explained that specific legislation would not be mentioned by name, and cited "H J Res 1" as an example. The innocuous-sounding bill turned out to be the Equal Rights Amendment, and word of its planned omission caused a furor among women's groups. Ferraro's office was forced to issue a retraction that same afternoon.

But by and large, Ferraro manages to hold strong views without causing extreme reactions. She is liberal (the Americans for Democratic Action gives her a 75% rating), but not too liberal for her ethnic working-class district, which gave her 73% of the vote in 1982. She is vehemently against deployment of the MX missile, though she supported its development under President Carter. She opposes mandatory school busing, supports tuition tax credits and favors a military draft. On abortion she is pro-choice as a matter of public policy. As a matter of conscience, she is against abortion. "I'm a Catholic," she says, "and I accept the teachings of my faith." But in fact, Ferraro admits she is not against abortion in cases of rape and has mixed feelings about the problem of pregnancy in young girls. A strong advocate of the ERA, Ferraro has focused on women's economic needs: a bill she co-sponsored liberalizing pensions, especially for women, was passed in the House last week. Says New York Mayor Ed Koch: "She's part of the Democratic mainstream."

Ferraro's journey to the mainstream was anything but routine. Born in Newburgh, N.Y., she was doted on by her Italian immigrant father, a prosperous restaurateur. During her first year he celebrated her birthday every month, lavishing dolls and frilly dresses on the little girl. When he died of a heart attack, Ferraro, then eight, was devastated. She was gravely ill with anemia for a year. Facing reduced circumstances, her mother Antonetta moved Geraldine and her brother Carl (now with New York City's human resources administration) to the South Bronx and took a job in the garment district crocheting beads on dresses. Urged on by her mother, Ferraro won successive scholarships to Marymount School in Tarrytown, N.Y., and Marymount College in Manhattan. While working as a second-and fourth-grade teacher in a Queens public school, she took night law classes at Fordham University, with financial help from her mother. The Congresswoman still uses her maiden name as a gesture of gratitude. Her mother remains an almost daily phone confidante and a shameless booster. Says the elder Ferraro: "Geraldine is such a hard worker. What honor she does me!"

After she married Real Estate Developer John Zaccaro three days after passing the bar examination, Ferraro's law career came second to raising her three children. She worked part time in her husband's office and, incurably active, dropped in on the local Democratic club on her way home from PTA meetings and children's ballet classes.

In 1974 her cousin Nicholas Ferraro, then Queens district attorney, gave her a job as an assistant prosecutor. She ran the special victims bureau, handling cases of child abuse and domestic violence so brutal and disturbing that she was unable to sleep at night. While on duty, however, Ferraro was a tough and effective prosecutor. "All the cops loved her," recalls Nick Ferraro. After four years, she was emotionally drained but politically invigorated: the experience, Ferraro says, made her liberal on social issues. She quit and ran successfully for Congress under the slogan FINALLY, A TOUGH DEMOCRAT.

She and her husband live in a comfortable Tudor-style house in the genteel Forest Hills Gardens section of Queens. They also maintain a beach house on Fire Island and a winter retreat in St. Croix. A full-time housekeeper-cook relieves Ferraro of the more onerous domestic chores, but she clings ritualistically to her weekly grocery shopping. The couple's three children, ages 22, 20 and 17, attended expensive prep schools (Choate, Spence) and private colleges (Brown, Middlebury). Ferraro, who flies home from her small Washington apartment every chance she gets, is very close to her husband of 24 years. Tall, stolid and implacably calm, Zaccaro is a steadying influence on his peripatetic wife. He overcame initial objections to her career ("I was real domineering then, but I've changed a lot"), and now radiates pride, escorting her silently but genially to the myriad banquets and functions that crowd her calendar.

"Gerri passes all the tests," says Congresswoman Barbara Kennelly, a Connecticut Democrat. "She is photogenic, she is bright, she has worked, she has brought up children, she is the right age." But is she qualified to be Vice President? Ferraro is the first to admit that she is being considered mainly because of her gender, not her qualifications. But she adds, "If I weren't capable of doing the job, I wouldn't be talked about." Naysayers bemoan her lack of expertise in arms control and foreign policy. Ferraro feels the Budget Committee has been a crash course on the economy ("I can debate that with anyone"), and working on the Democratic platform has refined her views on other domestic issues. A trip this year to Central America produced strong doubts about U.S. policy there ("We're just going about it all wrong"), and she returned from the Middle East with her pro-Israel views reinforced.

Ferraro wants the vice-presidential nomination, but she is careful not to seek it too hard. Facing a congressional election in November, she devotes several days a week to trekking through her old neighborhood, popping in at every function from bar association luncheons to meetings of retired postal carriers. Whenever a bubblingly optimistic host introduces her as "our next Vice President," Ferraro grins winningly and soft-pedals her chances. "I'm truly most concerned about one thing," she says, "and that's beating Ronald Reagan. If a woman on the ticket would make a stronger ticket, I'm willing to do it."

No matter what happens at the Democratic Convention, Ferraro stands to gain. All the talk about the vice presidency has enhanced her chances of a successful run against New York's Republican

Senator Alfonse D'Amato in 1986. If she made the ticket and the Democrats lost, Ferraro would be out of office. She does not see that as a long-term political handicap. Says she: "You run, give it your best shot, and if you lose you beat up on your opponent for two years and then run again."

That cold-eyed view of the future makes some of Ferraro's colleagues uncomfortable. "She has a tendency to be involved in everything," says a Demo ratic Congressman. "I'm a little backed off by her multiple ambitions." There is also concern over her untroubled rise in the House. "Because she's the darling of the leadership, we've handed her every prize in the book," says one Democratic member. "She hasn't been tested here."

Despite these misgivings, the people who know Ferraro would not lose any sleep if she were next in line for the presidency. "She is extremely competent," says Louisiana's Gillis Long, chairman of the House Democratic caucus. "She's a good word." And politician how in does the best Ferraro sense feel of about the the prospect? "I'm in awe," says Ferraro.

With aplomb, she quickly adds, "But not to the point of feeling I couldn't do the job. --By Alessandra Stanley. Reported by John F. Stacks/New York

With reporting by John F. Stacks