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Geraldine Ferraro

Geraldine Ferraro is a former three-term congresswoman from New York and the 1984 Democratic vice presidential nominee. As Walter Mondale’s running mate, she was the first female to be nominated by a major political party for national office. Ferraro was appointed by President Clinton to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and co-hosted CNN’s Crossfire from 1996 to 1998. She is a principal at Blank Rome Government Relations in New York City and a political analyst on Fox News Channel.

Sara Fritz interviewed Ferraro on April 25, 2007.

I can think of no one better than you to assess the prospects of electing a woman president these days, putting aside the prospects for Hillary [Clinton] in particular.

I don’t think you can do that. I don’t think you can just talk about a generic woman. I think you have to talk about the individual.

OK, what forces exist that might help or hinder? And you still hold to the fact that you have to be an individual?

Yes, I mean, it’s the face. Can any white male get elected? What helps or hinders him? No, they can’t. Can any black get elected? Well, if you are talking about Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, there we can talk about specifics. If we are talking about Barack Obama, [that’s a] totally different can of beans.

So that’s the problem I have with the women thing. What about a woman? I don’t think there is anything wrong with the voters in this country, that we are not as smart as people in Germany, or in London, England, nor in India, or in Israel. I mean, what are we? Are we dumb here? We have smarter voters in Nicaragua, and in the Philippines, and in Chile? I mean, where do you want me to go with how many people have elected [women] — Liberia? Are they all smarter there than we are?

That’s why I don’t think being a woman is a disability. I think there are problems that you might have as a woman raising money, or having the contacts, or because there are only 16 women in the United States Senate. Those are all disabilities. But I don’t think that if you have an individual who has experience in the international world, who has experience as a United States senator, who has the ability to raise money, who has the ability to pick up endorsements, who has fire in the belly, as they say, who is willing to take a risk — I think people look at that and say, “Wow, what’s a good candidate.” And it so happens that his name is John Kerry or her name is Hillary Clinton. I don’t think a woman has to have anything more than any of the guys do.

Well, let me ask again: What about Hillary?

I think she has all of those things I have just said. I think she is as good as and better than all of the other candidates running in both parties.

Are you a committed supporter or just an admirer?

I sure am. I am a committed supporter. I have said to others — I have a lot of friends in this primary — we have an embarrassment of riches in the Democratic Party. The Republican Party has embarrassment. I mean, it’s a real difference. But let me say to you that I have looked at the experience. I have looked at her capability of running and winning this race. And oh, thank God, she also happens to be a woman. I like that as well. I like that for my five granddaughters. It’s good for them for the future.

With two decades to think about it, do you think the nation was ready for a woman vice president when you ran?

Yes. I mean, if you take a look at the polls, what the polls said at that time was, I think, 18 percent hated the concept of a woman on the ticket and 18 percent thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. And the greater majority was like 58 percent. So that wasn’t an issue for them. And to be quite frank, with vice president it’s not quite the same thing as president. But I think that issue has come and gone.

I have always thought since Margaret Thatcher was the prime minister that perhaps it would be easier to elect a conservative woman president in the United States as the first one.

But again, you have to have somebody who is willing to take the risk. You saw Libby Dole was the first one who went out as a conservative person running for president. She wasn’t able to raise money. She wasn’t able to get the endorsements. She didn’t have all of the rest of the stuff that you need, which is the experience, the ability to do all the rest of that. And she also didn’t have a father whose name is George Bush. Maybe if his daughter had run, maybe. You may be right.

In the era that you ran, many woman candidates were getting hung up on the question of their husbands’ finances. You were not the first.

Right.

And that came as a surprise to a lot of people because up until that point, the spouse had been not a problem, because the spouse was always a woman. Do you think that the Mondale campaign understood that issue? Do you think it’s still a hurdle?

I think there had never been, at that point, a spouse who had a life of their own outside of their spouse’s. I think that issue will become an issue as long as you have professional women who are wives of guys running for office. Now, Elizabeth Edwards is an attorney, but I don’t know how much she actually practiced. Hillary was scrutinized for some of her law firm things, you recall, and from when her husband was running. Tipper Gore was taking pictures. John Kerry’s wife [Teresa Heinz Kerry] was looked at very carefully, both for her foundation and her other financial matters. [Michael] Dukakis’s wife [Kitty] was not financial, but it was her prescription-drug use. I think what they do is they go after whatever they think is the most vulnerable aspect of a candidate’s life and if it happens to be their spouse, I don’t think anything is off-limits. I think that the more professional women that you have who are married to guys who are running for office, you are going to see much more of the inquiry into finances.

This business of her husband’s activities is a particularly important issue for Hillary, it seems to me. And it probably is not money that is the problem. Her husband’s reputation is well-known. Do you think that hurts her?

It’s well-known. I mean, how could it affect it?

Well, you don’t think her husband’s philandering would enter into the decision of a voter?

If it’s going on now, I would say probably. But we have been there, done that. We know this stuff. The man was impeached because of this, for goodness sake. Is there anybody in this country who doesn’t know about that? How could that hurt her?

But if it is going on now, do you think that . . . ?

I have heard more Republicans try to advance that little rumor. Let them show me it.

One of the biggest changes that we are seeing this year is the whole nominating process.

Oh, isn’t it painful?

It’s really changed. How do you think that’s going to affect the outcome?

Well, I think it’s a problem for the greater majority of people who are in these races. I don’t think it’s a problem for Hillary, or for Barack Obama, or for John Edwards. But I do think it’s a problem for people like Joe Biden. I mean, [Dennis] Kucinich is going to stay in this thing no matter. He just likes the idea of running. He’s not really a credible candidate, though I hate saying that about somebody. But it really is true. I mean, tell me why he’s there. But when Joe Biden isn’t able to raise money, or Chris Dodd, it’s going to have an effect on them. But I think this race will narrow down considerably, if not shortly after the first or second of February, as it gets into the one big election primary day and it’s over for a whole bunch of people.

What about the whole issue of having the nominees pretty clear more than a year before the election?

Well, I don’t think you will have it a year before the election. I think it will whittle down to maybe three in February. And I think by March, though, you are going to be pretty damn close.

Well, will we get tired of these people before we cast our ballots?

Well, it’s eight months. I don’t know. No, I don’t think you are going to get tired of them, though if they do commercials on television they will drive us all nuts. No, but you can have a lot of races going on at the same time. You have a lot of Senate races going on. You have every single congressional race. There will be lots of governor races. There is going to be a lot of stuff going on. And obviously, we pay a lot of attention to the presidential. But what’s interesting is to see the interest by young people. And the campaign is on the Internet. It’s with blogs. I don’t think they are going to get tired of it. I think those are people more interested in what’s going on in issues, which is kind of new in a lot of ways.

Do you think that’s going to change the turnout among young people?

I would hope so.

You said that raising money is a problem for women, or could be, and you noted that only 16 women are in the Senate. But we are going to see a race here where it probably surpasses a billion dollars. What do you say to everybody who gets excluded that way?

That you can’t raise money?

That you don’t have the entry fee.

That’s nothing. I mean, it’s the same thing to the guys. It’s not the women who are having trouble.

No, no. What happens to [Tom] Vilsack and [Mike] Huckabee, people who just can’t come up with the entry fee.

Well, that’s it.

The end?

We do have public financing. They can choose to do that. These people have chosen not to do that. This was laid out by George [W.] Bush in 2000. Tell me why Libby Dole could not raise a damn dime. It wasn’t because she was a woman. It was because George [W.] Bush was in there raising from every single source imaginable. She was preempted. Steve Forbes was in that race, too. It didn’t make any difference. To Gary Bauer it didn’t make any difference, because he is like our Kucinich. I mean, you are in there. You have got a constituency. You just stay in there. Who is the black guy from Illinois who ran against Barack Obama in the last race?

Alan Keyes.

Yeah. Tell me, those people didn’t raise money to stay in the race. I mean, you don’t have to have the money.

Do you think the system needs to be changed? That we need to go back to public financing?

Listen, I am one of those people who believe in public financing for everything. I would love it if you couldn’t use any private money at all. But then that isn’t how the government works. We have public financing for presidential elections, and they have refused to take it. And it’s in both parties. What do you do? You say to these people, “You have got to play by my rules and not yours.” We would not have a mayor in New York City who is as good as Michael Bloomberg is if he didn’t use his own money. Did that preempt some other people from running against him? Absolutely. That means that we should turn around and say, “This is not right”? We ended up with a very good public official. We lucked out. So I don’t know if using your own money, or raising the money if you don’t have it yourself, I don’t know if those are bad things.

What about the compromises a candidate has to make to get the money?

Like what?

Promises, things that they will do if they get elected.

Well, it’s almost illegal to promise jobs. In fact, it is illegal. And the only thing you have to promise to do is policy issues. And you have to figure out whether or not people take you seriously and believe you. Now see, I don’t think you can compromise your principles, though I have watched it happen in the Republican Party. I am aghast at Rudy Giuliani now moving not quite so pro-choice as he was as mayor of New York. And he has moved a little bit. And he’s moving further. Not so Mitt Romney. I mean, I think that’s compromising principle. I think that’s wrong. But I do think you can turn around and take a look at issues and say: “Well, this would have worked when we had a surplus in our budget. We don’t have it now. So on health care, this is where I am seeing we will have to go instead.” I don’t think that’s compromise. I think that’s looking at the realities of what’s out there and making sure that you are addressing them.

What about 527s? In a sense, this is a place where women may benefit. But still, a lot of politicians are getting very antsy about the growing influence of the 527s.

Well, actually, they are trying to rein them in. I was on the board of a 527 last time that was called Working Women — I think that was the name of it. And what we did was we actually registered people, Republicans and Democrats, and the issue was, How do you deal with people in the workforce? We wanted women on both sides to go out and vote on the one issues. I don’t think that’s so bad. I do think that 527s have been abused. And the biggest abuse was in the ads for candidates by Swift Boats [Swift Boat Veterans for Truth]. I mean, it was being underwritten by a guy from Texas, I guess it was, and conservatives who just had millions to spend and found a couple of guys who would say whatever they wanted them to say, with no credibility because they had no proof of any of the things that they were saying. And why our party, why our candidate allowed that to happen, I will never, ever understand. But what can I say?

So it was more the response than the attack, or at least as much?

Exactly. I think the attack was horrendous. But I think that if the people who were in charge of John Kerry’s campaign had realized for one minute that these are not good guys, and that the American public could easily be swayed by this kind of garbage . . .

I want to go back one second to the issue of the long nominating process. You know better than anybody how rigorous this process of running for president, or running for national office, can be. What does that do to a person?

I don’t really know, because I was only involved for like four months.

Right. You weren’t there in the primary.

Yeah. I wasn’t there during it.

Talk about what effect it had on you.

The three and a half months? It was very different. You can’t compare that to what people are doing today. When I was running, I was the candidate of the [Democratic] Party. I remember I was in San Francisco and I was going over to the convention center. I was with Tip [O’Neill]. And as we were passing through, I turned and I said, “Gee, I wonder who all of those crowds are.” He said, “They are for you.” I was well-received every place I went. People were fabulous. I had crowds that came ten and fifteen thousand strong. You get people who are running in the primary, Barack Obama is doing it and Hillary is doing it, but you get some of these people who have 100 people, 125 people. It has to be exhausting to get up and go from place to place, and back and forth to people in Iowa, and back and forth to people in New Hampshire. I didn’t even know how the caucuses were run in New Hampshire and in Iowa until recently. When I heard that, I said: “Oh, my God. I don’t know what in God’s name people would go to these caucuses for.” And a reporter was telling me that he was out there, and he interviewed something like 80 people. And out of the 80 people something like 20 of them said they were going to attend the caucuses. And they were all very involved in the campaigns right now. Twenty percent showing up?

Right. Very small. How do you talk to those people?

I don’t know. I mean, you have to do it one-on-one. That isn’t what I had to put up with. It really wasn’t.

Consultants. There has been a lot of criticism that some of the difficult aspects of American politics are the fault of the consultants causing candidates to walk away from their own viewpoints, sort of homogenizing the way they want and that sort of thing. Do you have a view on that?

Well, I think some of them are really good. And what happens very frequently is sometimes you end up with personal relationships with consultants. And you really shouldn’t be using them. And you do it because of personal relationships, which is what happened to me in the Senate race.

What went on? Who was your personal relationship with?

I will not go back there.

But I think that happens in a lot of presidential races, the personal thing. And then if the person doesn’t pick the consultant, God, it’s all of a sudden they are not quite such wonderful candidates. It’s terrible. Consultants make a lot of money. And sometimes they are very good. But it seems to me that you didn’t have such a race toward the amount of money that’s paid to consultants who get a piece of everything that’s on television. And you then have the high cost of television. You really get a lot more people running for office willing to take the risk.

You took a lot of grief from the news media. Do you have an opinion on the role they play in this process?

If the news media is reporting, which is what I think it should be doing, then I think it’s doing its job. And if you are not happy with what they are reporting, it’s fine. I think, however, if the news media allows itself to be used by campaigns — and it does — then I think they really have an obligation to turn, to step back and say, “Oh, stop.”

Now let me do a “for instance” on this thing. I work for Fox News. I am on occasionally; not a lot, but they don’t put me on a lot because I think they like to see young faces on a lot more. But I am a contract player for Fox. Somebody said to me, “So, why do you do this?” And I said, “Because I love the opportunity to let them hear what they don’t want to hear and let them pay me for doing it.” They are complaining the Democrats won’t go on there. And by that I mean the Democratic candidates. The Democratic candidates refuse to let them do a debate. And some of the people at Fox are complaining. I said: “What do you expect? When you take a news story, and you report only the things that are favorable to the Bush administration, and you would have someone on there constantly attacking Hillary or any of the Democrats, that is the reason why people don’t want to be on your television [network].” They say, “Well, the liberals do it.” I say, “No they don’t, not to the degree that you do.”

So when the news media stop reporting and start shaping the news favorably to whatever issue or party they care about, then it stops serving a useful purpose. Now I don’t mind columnists doing their thing, I don’t mind people on entertainment shows doing their thing. But I do mind it if it’s supposedly a news show, and it’s a distortion of facts or it’s leaving facts out. I think people are silly to try to argue that candidates should ignore that. I think they should look very carefully at it. And if indeed they say they are not getting a fair shake, then don’t appear on the shows.

Well, of course now you see a crossover where you have real reporters who also go on TV and express their opinions.

I think it depends. I watch, for instance, Andrea Mitchell, and she will go on Chris Matthews. But she is more reporting what is being done and said. I have no problems with that. “Well, what do you think is going to happen?” “Well, I think this is what’s going to happen when Bush does this.” I think she is more of a reporter. I think Dan Rather on that show — I have no problems with reporters going on there. What I have a problem with is where they take the news and . . .

Become an advocate for one point of view.

Right.

With the state of things, including the war in Iraq and who knows what else, there is a lot of hand-wringing about this process in general of picking a president.

We screwed up in 2000?

I am not saying that. I mean, what worries you? What concerns you?

Well, let’s look at George [W.] Bush. How well did we pick that president in 2000? We picked someone who had the ability to raise money, and who kind of had his father’s name. And who coopted all of the public officials so he was able to get the nomination quite clearly, almost independently, despite the fact that he really didn’t have any experience. But he takes a man who had a good deal of experience, Dick Cheney, and makes him his vice president. Runs against Al Gore, and — if you take a look at that election, which will never happen again — where if it wasn’t for how the votes were counted in Florida, Al Gore would have been president in 2000. If it wasn’t for the Supreme Court that was so conservative that found for him, Al Gore would have been president.

It happened again in 2004, not with the presidential but the congressional race in Florida. Isn’t it amazing that votes just disappeared from a congressional seat in a Democratic area of the district, so that the Democrat lost? Well, isn’t that amazing? Isn’t it something that, in black areas in Ohio, people were not able to get to the polls? Tell me that this makes sense that we have allowed this to happen. I find that the most distressing thing. Except for the fact that there was this crazy vote in Florida, that his brother was the governor, who knows what was going on with those chads and all of the rest of that stuff? He stole that election, I really believe that. And in 2004, you have pretty much the same thing going on and this time with Ohio. We are not going to let that happen again. I am speaking to law students tomorrow night. And one of the things I say is: “Get yourselves to the polls on election. Volunteer now. And all I want you to do is to watch to make sure people are counting the votes.”

Younger people would help, I guess.

And then, in this past gubernatorial election, someone went to the polls in the state of Missouri and wanted to vote and was told that she had to have some sort of a state registration form, by Republicans. She said, “No, I do not.” And so they said, “Yes, the law says that you have to have it.” Now fortunately this woman was the secretary of state [Robin Carnahan]. And they said, “Oh, OK.” She says, “You better check.” That guy said, “Oh, yeah, you are right.” Now she was a white smart lady. What do you do if you are getting people who aren’t educated, who are poor, who are intimidated by these people saying you can’t vote, because if you do you violate the law and they will put you in jail?

You say this is not going to happen again. Why?

Well, I think we have gotten smarter, even in Florida. I’m a Floridian for part of the year. And Governor [Charlie] Crist has made a real effort to do something about having a paper trail. This is a Republican, by the way. So you say, OK, that’s a good idea. We had many more people out in the 2006 elections and throughout the country and the polls watching what was going on. But it won’t happen again.

Is there a legislative remedy, you think?

Oh, I think there has been vote reform that is going on throughout the country.

It’s still a state option, though.

Yeah, as it should be. But the thing about it is machines are being changed. Paper trails are being put in. I mean, people are not stupid. You let them get away with it once or twice. You can’t let them get away with it more than that.