The rush of excitement around the selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as Kamala Harris' running mate in the 2024 Presidential Election is bringing up memories for the son of another famous Vice President from the state.
"I, Walter F. Mondale, solemnly swear... "
Of course that's Walter Mondale who was sworn into office as Vice President in 1977 under President Jimmy Carter.
Many years later, Mondale's son Ted remembers the news of the selection of his father to fill the role.
"You know, we sat there all that night, obviously knowing something was up, waiting," Mondale recalls.
Waiting for word was tough.
"The next night we were on the stage at Madison Square Garden," says Mondale. "I mean, I didn't have a suit."
He says he ended up wearing a borrowed suit that night.
"And we borrowed the media mogul, entertainment mogul Herb Allen's suit, which fit me just fine. I think it's the last time I ever had a $2,000 suit on, it was that one night," Mondale jokes.
Being thrown into the national spot is something he won't soon forget.
Mondale said his father found out he had been chosen as he got home from his job, and encountered a crowd at his house. So Walter had to sneak around the neighbor's yard.
"And all of a sudden this man grabbed my thumb and, you know, took me to the ground," Mondale told WCCO's Susie Jones. "And obviously he was Secret Service and he said, 'who are you?' I kind of said, well, who are you? I live here."
Mondale and Hubert Humphrey are the two Minnesotans who have reached the second highest office in the land. Minnesota has never produced a president. Both Mondale (1984) and Humphrey ( 1968) ran for president as Democrats, and both lost.
It was actually Humphrey's selection as Vice President by Lyndon Johnson in 1964 that gave Mondale his start in national politics. Mondale, a lawyer by trade, had been appointed and then elected as the state's Attorney General when Humphrey was tapped to be vice president. Governor Karl Rolvaag then appointed Mondale to fill the vacated U.S. Senate seat when Humphrey resigned 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. After losing the 1984 Presidential Election, Mondale returned to practicing law in Minnesota but his service wasn't done. 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 DFL 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 St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman.