Ferraro, Geraldine Anne (1935- )

US Democratic politician, vice‐presidential candidate in the 1984 election.

Ferraro, a lawyer, was elected to Congress in 1981 and was selected in 1984 by Walter Mondale to be the USA's first female vice‐presidential candidate from one of the major parties. The Democrats were defeated by the incumbent president Reagan, and Ferraro, damaged by investigations of her husband's business affairs, retired temporarily from politics. She was appointed in 1993 to the UN Human Rights Commission. In 1998 she lost the Democrat primary race for the New York senatorship.

In June 2001, Ferraro disclosed that she had been suffering from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer, since 1998. She was one of the first people to be treated for cancer with the controversial drug thalidomide, which put the cancer into remission. Ferraro testified about the disease at a Senate hearing on 21 June, to appeal for more federal funding for myeloma research.