A Break with Tradition

By George L. Church, Ed Magnuson

CAMPAIGN James Johnson kept his glacial blue eyes glued to the motel-room TV set, his mouth slightly open as if in wonder. Walter Mondale's campaign chairman had been in the state capitol in St. Paul earlier that day, of course, but he wanted to relive that poignant experience. He switched around among all three networks, nodding in silent approval as anchormen described Mondale's running-mate selection as historic and unprecedented. The phone broke into Johnson's reverie: it was his boss calling. Johnson told him the story had dominated the nightly news and the national reaction was enthusiastic beyond all their hopes. Hanging up, he observed: "Walter Mondale has never experienced a day like this before. People were actually crying. He has never had this kind of response, this same kind of excitement."

The excitement was justified: Mondale's choice had broken the mold of American politics. It transformed what had been as a dull campaign grinding to a predestined conclusion into a less predictable venture already assured a place in history, whatever its outcome. The odds are firmly against Geraldine Ferraro, 48, actually becoming the first woman to stand next in line of succession to the White House. Ronald Reagan will be a formidable campaign foe. But the point was, no one could be sure; a thousand calculations--the effect of a woman national candidate on the female vote, the male vote, the South, the West, urban blue-collar workers, Black and Hispanic voters--have to be done for the very first time. And assuredly not for the last time; those calculations enter into the making of every presidential election ticket from now on.

For Mondale, the naming of Ferraro offered a more immediate payoff: it virtually ensured an upbeat, if not totally unified, Democratic Convention in San Francisco this week. Gary Hart, who said only hours before it was offered to Ferraro, that he would accept the V.P. spot, lost what hope he had of winning over disaffected Mondale delegates. Jesse Jackson, the master political showman, had been upstaged; he will find it hard now to depict the Democratic Party as closed to outsiders. As for being possibly overshadowed by speakers like New York Governor Mario Cuomo and Senator Edward Kennedy, Mondale could look forward instead to hearing their rhetorical gifts lavished on his selection of a running mate.

Mondale had not set out in cool calculation to make a choice that would imprint his name on the pages of American political-history books. Nor had the idea of selecting a woman hit him in a flash of inspiration. It had evolved, growing in fits and starts. Mondale's musing about the possibility began last fall when his vaunted political machine seemed on the verge of locking up the nomination almost before the primaries began. Hart's upset victory in the New Hampshire primary in February rudely suspended such thinking, which did not resume in earnest until May. Said one adviser: "We started thinking we had to consider a woman candidate, but not really expecting at that point that a woman would be chosen."

When the primary season ended on June 5, Mondale was almost certainly assured of a delegate majority, but he suffered a jolting loss in California, and his candidacy looked shaky. Reagan, bolstered by a reviving economy, was growing stronger by the week. To Mondale and his men, the need for a bold stroke became increasingly apparent. Said one aide: "We needed a tremendous lift, no matter the risk."

Thus began the much criticized parade of possible Veep candidates to North Oaks, Minn., for interviews with Mondale. Quite deliberately, a Black mayor, Los Angeles' Tom Bradley, was invited first. A woman, San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, soon followed. She quickly impressed the Mondale aides with her warmth, polish and preparation. "Feinstein had her own specific ideas on what a Vice President could do," a Mondale adviser recalls. When Ferraro arrived to discuss the work of the party platform committee, which she heads, Mondale sized her up as a possibility too. Henry Cisneros, the youthful Hispanic-American Mayor of San Antonio, also was high on the list of visiting prospects.

Mondale and his advisers soon dropped the whole idea of selecting a candidate on the traditional basis of ticket-balancing geography. He needed much more than a Vice President who could deliver the electoral votes of a home state. When a Gallup poll showed Reagan 19 points ahead, the impulse to go for broke was reinforced. Jim Johnson held several senior staff meetings in Washington the weekend of June 27-28. All the participants either were eager to see a woman selected or were open-minded.

Ferraro arrived in St. Paul with her husband John Zaccaro on July 2. Killing time while their spouses talked, Joan Mondale and Zaccaro took a tour of an art gallery. "Now tell me," Zaccaro asked, "which of the men is he going to pick?" Her reply was noncommittal. In private, she had pushed hard for the selection of a woman. "I don't have a chair at the boardroom table," she explained later about her influence on her husband. "I don't need one."

Ferraro, like Feinstein, seemed unafraid of taking on the vice-presidential race, even with the risk that she might be blamed if the ticket failed. Mondale's advisers were impressed by both women and soon became partisans of one or the other.

The Minnesotan was interested enough in Feinstein to dispatch Johnson to San Francisco on July 5. He had a 60-minute talk with Feinstein, probing for anything in her medical history or finances--or those of her husband Richard Blum, a wealthy investor--that might prove troublesome if she were selected. On the following Sunday, the New York Times carried a report, apparently inspired by a Mondale aide who favored Feinstein, that Mondale had been disappointed in Ferraro when the two had talked. Mondale called Ferraro the next day to tell her that the story was untrue. Ferraro did not seem reassured by the call, which had almost come too late. Says her husband John: "Gerri was losing interest real quick." Ferraro had not blamed Mondale for the newspaper story, but noted, "Obviously, somebody does not like me."

Feinstein's hopes were further buoyed that same Sunday when two Mondale staffers, Peter Kyros and Michael Cardoza, arrived at her house and stayed for four hours. They asked questions about her health, children, previous marriages (Feinstein and one husband had divorced; a second had died) and finances. "They messed up my Sunday," Blum complained with mock seriousness. "They wanted to know everything all the way back to kindergarten." On Monday the aides spent 14 hours at Blum's downtown office, scouring financial records. Blum ordered sandwiches sent in so reporters would not spot the Mondale men.

Last Tuesday John Reilly, the senior Mondale aide in charge of the Veep hunt, also tried to slip into San Francisco. But spotted by a CBS camera crew at the airport, he explained candidly that he was there to see not Feinstein but Ferraro, who had arrived for the pre-convention planning. He met with the Congresswoman for two hours in her Hyatt Hotel suite, seeking assurances that there were no potential problems in her past. As he left in a cab for the airport, Reilly found a TV van following. "Lose it," Reilly barked at the driver, who raced the car through alleys and side streets. At the airport, Reilly hid in a phone booth until his plane was ready to leave. On the same day, Mondale-aide Michael Berman went over finances with Ferraro's husband in New York.

Now the Mondale advisers knew that their boss might very likely turn to one of the two women, but they did not know which. As he worked on the convention acceptance speech he is ready to deliver this week, Mondale kept his short list of candidates in mind. He was framing an address that would stress his desire to open new opportunities for all Americans, without abandoning the traditional values of family and hard work that Reagan has tried to seize for the G.O.P. "Writing the speech really crystallized his thinking about a running mate," says a Mondale aide.

As Mondale saw it, the choice of a woman would dramatically express his intention to open new doors. And the woman who most closely personalized what he would call the "classic American dream" was Ferraro, whose mother had worked as a seamstress to support her daughter after the father died. Ferraro, in turn, had worked as a teacher to finance nighttime law-school classes. She has been unusually close to her husband for 24 years of marriage and to their three children. Said a Mondale adviser: "She totally symbolized Mondale's fundamental case."

On Wednesday afternoon, Reilly was deputized to phone Ferraro in San Francisco and tell her to stand by for a call from Mondale at 6:30 p.m. But Mondale did not finally commit himself, even to his closest aides, until half an hour before the scheduled call. Then, in a meeting with Johnson, Reilly and Press Secretary Maxine Isaacs, he looked around the North Oaks den and finally said it, simply: "Let's go with Ferraro."

Reilly dialed Ferraro's hotel in San Francisco, got the Queens Congresswoman on the phone and handed the receiver to Mondale. "Here goes," said Mondale to his aides, and into the mouthpiece, to Ferraro: "I'd like you to run with me ... [pause] Great!" He passed the phone back to Reilly to arrange the logistics of getting her to Minnesota for the formal announcement. Reilly apologized for putting pressure on her just as she was about to deliver a foreign policy speech to the World Affairs Council in San Francisco. Unruffled, the Congresswoman replied, "I think I'll go out and give Reagan hell." (She did.) Reilly told her, "You'll be hearing from Peter Kyros," who was dispatched to bring her to Minnesota, and hung up.

The den erupted. Mondale and his aides cheered, shook hands and, in a strange gesture for that controlled group, slapped palms in the high-five manner of basketball players celebrating a slam dunk. Mondale a few minutes later strolled out onto the patio, lit a cigar and savored the moment alone. His younger son William, 22, joined him; they talked about, of all things, mosquitoes, which are plaguing North Oaks this summer.

Ferraro, between her talk with Mondale and her speech, got in two quick calls. Her 18-year-old daughter, Laura, picked up the phone at the family home in Queens and said simply, "Well?" Ferraro: "It's yes." Laura: "Are you sure it's not 'maybe'? Are you sure it's not 'possibly'?" "It's definite," replied Ferraro. Laura screamed to her father, "Yes!" Then Ferraro called her mother Antonetta, 79, and told her to stop worrying about living alone in New York and "shift your prayers somewhere else." Said Antonetta: "I think I'm so excited, I'm going to faint."

Mondale had some calling to do too. After a supper of cold fried chicken with family and aides, he returned to the den to contact the other candidates he had been considering and tell them he had chosen someone else--without saying whom. Most reacted without surprise. Bradley had so little expectation of getting favorable word, that embarrassed aides had to tell Mondale's assistants that the mayor had gone out on a private matter without bothering to tell them where he could be reached. Mondale did not get hold of him until Thursday morning.

Feinstein had agreed to pose for TIME as a possible Vice President and was just about to leave her Pacific Heights home for a nearby studio when the phone rang. She later recalled her conversation with Mondale: "He said, 'I want to tell you that I think you are a star. I want to tell you that you're on the top of the media's list, but I've decided to go another way and I hope you will trust me.' " Feinstein called off the photo session and went on calmly to attend a black-tie dinner. When reporters met with her the next day in her city hall office, a black-and-white MONDALE-FEINSTEIN button still reposed on a small china tray.

While Mondale was on the phone to the also-rans, Ferraro slipped out a side door of the St. Francis Hotel and was whisked into a waiting car; Kyros jumped in a block away from his stakeout post in front of a department store. At Oakland Airport, they boarded a Learjet owned by Tom Rosenberg, Mondale's Illinois Finance Chairman, who had been asked by Johnson that afternoon to have the plane flown to San Francisco. Ferraro, chatting with Rosenberg and Kyros on the flight to Anoka airport, a small field about ten miles from North Oaks, remarked that she felt oddly detached from all the turmoil. She arrived at Mondale's home at 1:45 a.m., talked with Mondale and his family in the living room for about 45 minutes and went to bed in the room of Mondale's daughter Eleanor. Both candidates were up by 8 to work on the speeches they would give four hours later at the televised announcement in St. Paul.

Mondale declared: "Our founders said in the Constitution, 'We the people'--not just the rich, or men, or white, but all of us. Our message is that America is for everyone who works hard and contributes to our blessed country. That's what my choice is about, and that's what Gerry's about." During pauses to let the cheers roll, Mondale could be heard over open mics making some avuncular, old-pro remarks to Ferraro, standing beside him in a bright red dress and simple string of pearls. "What did I tell you about Minnesota?" he asked the New Yorker during a standing ovation. A bit later: "You'll have to get used to this. At the convention, you'll have to smile for 15 minutes."

But Ferraro needed no coaching. "Thank you, Vice President Mondale, " she replied, then paused and observed, "Vice President--it has such a nice ring to it." The line drew appreciative laughter and more applause. When it died down, Ferraro proceeded, in the rapid, hard-edged accents of a native New Yorker, to appeal to several constituencies while introducing herself to her first national audience--all in five minutes.

For the ethnic urban voters who have been defecting to Reagan, there was a reminder that she will be the first Italian American, as well as the first woman, nominated by a major party for national office, all phrased in a context of patriotism ("My father came to America from a little town in Italy called Marcianise. Like millions of other immigrants, he loved our country passionately"). For social conservatives, a stress on traditional values ("I have a strong, loving family...our neighborhood and our faith are important parts of our lives"); for liberals, brief expressions of worry about what Reagan might do to Social Security and Medicare. For hawks and doves, a remark that her Queens constituents "support a strong, sensible defense" but "want nothing to do with reckless adventures in Latin America."

As if acknowledging the strangeness of her accent, Ferraro commented that those constituents "are not alone; you know people just like them." Finally, she voiced an appreciation of her unprecedented role as a woman on the ticket: "There's an electricity in the air, an excitement, a sense of new possibilities and of pride." Then came the standard campaign scene of the two candidates waving from the rostrum surrounded by members of their families, but this time with a striking twist: Ferraro's husband joined the crowd on the podium in the role of smiling, adoring spouse.

Despite that polished performance, Ferraro has drawbacks. Her lack of national experience, especially in foreign policy, offers a target to Republicans, who will contrast it with the impressive resume of Vice President George Bush. Ferraro's supporters retort that the foreign policy credentials of such Republican choices as William Miller in 1964 and Spiro Agnew in 1968 were next to invisible.

In any case, the immediate reaction to the announcement of Ferraro's selection was quick, voluminous and largely favorable. Even before the candidates spoke in St. Paul, Mondale's aides were polling Democratic convention delegates and party contributors; after the announcement, calls streamed in from state and party leaders all over the country. The response startled Mondale's assistants. Said one: "The men who participated in this decision, including Mondale, had no idea how popular it would be."

Feminists were agog. Many, even political activists, interpreted the news in intensely personal terms. Said Ann Richards, State Treasurer of Texas: "The first thing I thought of was not winning, in the political sense, but of my two daughters. To think of the numbers of young women who can now aspire to anything!" At a National Organization for Women press conference in Washington, Democratic Leader Sharon Pratt Dixon was so carried away that she started to pronounce the name of the head of the ticket as "Walter Ferra..." She corrected it to Walter Mondale amid a gale of laughter.

Politically, the prevailing opinion is that the choice will add verve and flair to the campaign. "The idea of that new ingredient, the mysterious factor of the female vote, makes Ferraro a high-risk, high-gain pick," asserted Democratic Governor Richard Lamm of Colorado. Republicans agree, in a kind of left-handed way. Colorado Republican Chairman Howard ("Bo") Callaway, once a campaign manager for Gerald Ford, called the selection of Ferraro "the first excitement, the first non-mush I've seen in Mondale's political career."

Beyond that, only one prediction seems safe: Ferraro will be scrutinized, written about, pictured on TV, quizzed at news conferences, debated over living-room tables more than any vice-presidential candidate in decades--if not ever. Indeed, says California Pollster Mervin Field, "apart from a movie star, she will be covered more than any other woman."

The immediate result will be a burst of publicity for the Democratic ticket and attention that no other choice could buy. "Ferraro will give us the opportunity to get double coverage," exults John Sasso, an aide to Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis (the white male who probably would have received the V.P. nod had Mondale played it safe). But there is a risk: the slightest hesitancy or overaggressiveness in manner, any fumbled response to a question or verbal gaffe will be enormously magnified. Ferraro is a streetwise campaigner who has won three elections to Congress as a liberal Democrat from Archie Bunker's district in Queens. (She likes to say, "Archie didn't elect me. Edith did.") But she is untested in a national campaign.

At a joint appearance with the head of the ticket for a picnic and press conference Friday in Mondale's home town of Elmore, Minn. (pop. 882), Ferraro got a mixed reception from a curious crowd. As anti-abortion pickets stood on the fringes of the group, Ferraro stated courageously, if more than a bit redundantly, "The choice has to be the choice of the woman facing the choice." That drew applause. But she went on to assert that "the President walks around calling himself a good Christian, but I don't for one minute believe it because the policies are so terribly unfair." It was the kind of harsh, overpersonal and unfair remark that could land her in deep trouble.

The main hope of Democrats is that Ferraro will draw to the polls many women who do not ordinarily vote, convert to the Democratic cause some Republican women who doubt that their party takes them seriously and bring to Mondale's banner legions of zealous female campaign workers. Women already are a majority of the electorate; they cast 6 million more votes than men did in 1980. Reagan took 46% of their vote, to 45% for Jimmy Carter, but that was much smaller than his plurality among men, and since then every poll has shown Reagan running considerably worse among females than males.

There are some early signs that the Democrats' strategy of broadening the gender gap into a chasm may be effective. In Virginia, after Ferraro's selection, women workers in day care centers began asking every parent to register and vote. In Alabama, Mondale campaign headquarters logged within hours 65 calls from women volunteers. But how widespread will this phenomenon be, how long will it last and to what ex- tent might it be offset by a backlash among men and more traditionalist women?

A CBS News/New York Times poll of 747 voters taken immediately after the choice of Ferraro indicated less enthusiasm at the grass roots than among political activists. Majorities of both sexes--62% of men, 54% of women--gave the selection a blah, "all right" rating. But among men, only 13% were excited by the choice; 20% thought it a "bad idea." The margin among women was surprisingly small: 22% excited, 18% saying "bad idea." One possible clue to the results: 60% of all those polled thought Mondale had made his choice in response to pressure from women's groups, vs. only 22% who thought he picked Ferraro because she was the best available candidate.

Earlier polls generally had shown a woman vice-presidential candidate would attract about as many voters as she would repel. Politicians, and some pollsters, are not at all sure, though, that the surveys are correctly measuring the extent of potential backlash. They note that voters have been asked to respond to a theoretical situation that they have never actually had to face. One Republican pollster points out another factor that may distort the results: the majority of the people employed organizations to question voters are women, and men may hesitate to express unfavorable opinions of a woman candidate to them. In- deed, Mondale's aides admit that their belief that a woman vice-presi- dential candidate will help the ticket is based on gut feelings rather than any statistical evidence.

Reagan's assistants are puzzled about how to handicap Ferraro's effect on the race. They concede she has some strengths. Some White House aides speculate that her selection might help the Democrats hold the votes of the Yuppies, who turned out heavily for Gary Hart but viewed Mondale as a man of the past. Ferraro also presents the Republicans with a delicate problem: how to campaign against her without looking sexist.

Besides questioning her qualifications, the Republicans plan to portray the selection of Ferraro as a cynically political move. They will also paint Ferraro as an ultraliberal. Ferraro sounds ready for combat. "Everyone keeps comparing me to Vice President Bush," she said in Elmore. "That's delightful. I think we should have a debate or two." A spokesman for Bush said he was willing, but the White House may veto the idea: the President's aides want to keep the focus on Reagan and Mondale.

The President indirectly sounded part of the Administration line on Ferraro at a White House luncheon Friday for female Republican elected officials. Said he: "The Conservative Party of Great Britain chose Margaret Thatcher as their leader not because she was a woman but because she was the best person for the job. There was no tokenism or cynical 'symbolism' in what they did." Reagan-Bush Campaign Director Edward Rollins sarcastically termed Ferraro "a superb choice. She is bright, articulate, and she stands for everything Mondale stands for--increasing taxes, cutting defense spending."

Reagan strategists are still looking at--the election in the geographical--terms Mondale's aides abandoned. In the White House view, "Ferraro's choice cements Reagan's hold on the conservative South and West. The choice of a Southern or Western male might not have shaken that hold either, but, say the Reaganauts, it would have forced the Republicans to devote money and campaign time to securing the Sunbelt base. Those resources can now safely be devoted to the urban Northeast and industrial Midwest.

Mondale at week's end made a controversial move to shore up Democratic strength in the South. He named Georgia Democratic Chairman Bert Lance General Chairman of his campaign and head of a search to find a replacement for Charles Manatt, who is being dismissed as Democratic National Chairman. Though no one doubts Lance's grasp of Southern politics, the choice dismayed some Democrats, who feared it would revive memories of the uproar over Lance's financial affairs that erupted when he served in the Carter Administration.

The battle for the blue-collar vote may be the most important struggle of the campaign, and it is difficult to gauge how Ferraro might affect it. She embodies the family background and religious and work-ethic values of such voters, but she is well to the left of many, who have turned conservative in economics and hawkish in foreign affairs. Ferraro overcame that drawback in Queens, but can she do so elsewhere?

That is only one of the myriad questions that make the campaign suddenly so unpredictable. Might Ferraro draw enough women's votes, and possibly pique the interest of enough men, even in the South and West, to loosen Reagan's grip there? (Feminists were fond of observing last week that Sunbelt males also have daughters for whom they have high aspirations.) How will Black and Hispanic voters judge her? How many voters of all kinds will pay much attention to the vice presidency, and how many, after the first blast of comment about a woman on the ticket, will focus primarily on the basic choice between Reagan and Mondale?

There is no experience that leads to a confident answer. Says Texas State Treasurer Richards, in perhaps the most judicious comment on the choice: "All the old saws are out the window. There is no way, even with our sophisticated polling procedures, that we can measure a factor that is unprecedented. We are only going to know on Election Day." -- By George L Church and Ed Magnuson. Reported by Robert Ajemian and Sam Allis with Mondale, Douglas Brew/Washington, with other bureaus

With reporting by Robert Ajemian, Sam Allis, Douglas Brew