Walter Fritz Mondale
My only serious foray in electoral politics began early in 1983 when I signed on with the Mondale campaign. I joined because of his alliance with the labor movement and his solid ties to the Black community - quite like Joe Biden with whom he was pretty much on the same page. As a long-time anti-war movement activist it was a step toward the mainstream for me. I did not regret it for a minute. He was a decent man - much like Biden today in temperament and perspective. He wasn't much of an orator but he never uttered a word he had to apologize for.
I had been a county coordinator for the nuclear freeze campaign - an important movement at the time because Ronald Reagan was talking Star Wars and hadn't yet had his face to face with Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik. But there was a lot of dissatisfaction among my usual allies on the left. They flooded to Gary Hart and mainly, to Rev. Jesse Jackson. I had long followed Jackson - having written a paper on him when I was a grad student of Howard Zinn at BU. But I didn't think he was a viable candidate for President. Hart, of whom my opinion later grew, was too neo-lib for me. They called themselves Atari Democrats. So the Mondale campaign was home for me.
I was deployed to debate Jackson and Hart proxies at town Democratic clubs in northern New Jersey, speak to friendly crowds, like National Organization for Women (NOW) chapters. It was heady - speaking for the leading candidate for the Presidential nomination, with only campaign talking points and reports from the Times to guide me.
I finally got to meet Mondale a few days before the June New Jersey primary. He came to Newark for a rally in a big auditorium at the University of Medicine and Dentistry. It took some finagling to get me into the place, and standing on the edge of the speakers platform. The Secret Service had dug up the record of my arrest for obstructing governmental operations and resisting arrest at a picket line in front of Macy's Herald Square where I stepped out of bounds as a "legal observer" supporting the Amalgamated Clothing Workers strike at the Farrah pants factory in Texas or was it New Mexico.
New Jersey put Mondale over the top - the end of a long campaign.
To my surprise I was named to the Democratic National Committee's "Permanent Platform Committee". That brought me to Washington, D.C for three days of contentious meetings. Chaired by Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, Jackson and Hart forced floor votes on many platform planks. I spent time on line for the microphone but found that Brooklyn Congressman Stephen Solarz felt that he owned it. But I was in the fight, and loved it. There was never a position that the campaign took that made me uncomfortable. I do remember being denounced by the Congressman behind me - Charles Schumer - when I voted with the Mondale campaign to call for an end to expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank of the Jordan River.
The Convention was in San Francisco where the platform fight continued. I was sent to other state delegations to pitch the Mondale campaign's perspective on arms control, with talking points handed to me by Madeline Albright. And then it was over. When the floor fights on platform ended there was nothing for me to do but listen to Kool & the Gang - the convention house band, enhance my mood, and wait for the nightly parties on Fisherman's Wharf hosted by then State Assembly Leader Willie Brown. A particularly high point was strolling in to the warehouse on the bay to the sounds of Grace Slick singing White Rabbit, which caught my mood perfectly.
So thank you, Walter Mondale. Every nice thing anyone has to say about you is true. RIP.
- GWC
Nice story George. He was a decent and caring man, like Biden as you say.
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