For­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Wal­ter “Fritz” Mon­dale booked two events on a Seat­tle stop ear­ly in his 1984 cam­paign for the White House, a tony $500-a-per­son fundrais­er and a pub­lic ral­ly down at the Emer­ald City’s Pike Place Market.

The donors were treat­ed to a laid back, lucid, and at times very fun­ny Mon­dale, and emerged as believ­ers in his pres­i­den­tial bid.

But the pub­lic event saw a much more for­mal Mon­dale, his speech a suc­ces­sion of oft-repeat­ed lines and bows in the direc­tion of Demo­c­ra­t­ic inter­est groups.

A dis­tin­guished Seat­tle lawyer, future U.S. Dis­trict Judge Bill Dwyer, wit­nessed both events and shook his head at the contrast.

Mon­dale, dead at nine­ty-three, showed both those faces dur­ing a long, dis­tin­guished career in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. He could be so stiff as to be giv­en the nick­name “Nor­we­gian wood” after the Bea­t­les song, but when laid back with a cig­ar he could tell sto­ries of his rise in Min­neso­ta pol­i­tics and blend his humor to under­score his fights for pro­gres­sive causes.

Call him stiff, but Fritz was also stur­dy, a per­son who could make change hap­pen. He would serve as Minnesota’s attor­ney gen­er­al, spend a dozen years in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate, four years as Jim­my Carter’s vice pres­i­dent, with a lat­er-in-life break to serve as U.S. Ambas­sador to Japan under Pres­i­dent Clin­ton (to be fol­lowed by retired House Speak­er Tom Foley).

“When I arrived in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate in 1973, Wal­ter Mon­dale was one of the first peo­ple to greet me,” said Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in a statement.

Vice Pres­i­dents Wal­ter Mon­dale and Joe Biden togeth­er in Min­neso­ta. Both would lat­er become the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s pres­i­den­tial stan­dard bear­er, almost forty years apart. (Pho­to: Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden’s office)

“Through his work as a Sen­a­tor, he showed me what was possible.”

“He may have been mod­est and unas­sum­ing in man­ner, but he was unwa­ver­ing in his pur­suit of progress; instru­men­tal in pass­ing laws like the Fair Hous­ing Act to pre­vent racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in hous­ing, Title IX to pro­vide more oppor­tu­ni­ties for women, and laws to pro­tect our envi­ron­ment. There have been few sen­a­tors, before or since, who com­mand­ed such uni­ver­sal respect.”

“When Pres­i­dent Oba­ma asked me to con­sid­er being his Vice Pres­i­dent, Fritz was my first call and trust­ed guide. He not only took my call, he wrote me a memo. It was Wal­ter Mon­dale who defined the vice pres­i­den­cy as a full part­ner­ship, and helped pro­vide a mod­el for my ser­vice. And Joan did the same for Jill, help­ing her carve out a role for her­self as our nation’s Sec­ond Lady.”

“Dur­ing our admin­is­tra­tion, Fritz used his polit­i­cal skill and per­son­al integri­ty to trans­form the vice pres­i­den­cy into a dynam­ic pol­i­cy dri­ven force that had nev­er been seen before and still exists today,” Pres­i­dent Carter said in a statement.

Jim­my Carter and Wal­ter Mon­dale at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion, New York City on on July 15th, 1976 (Pho­to: War­ren K. Leffler)

Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris added her own attes­ta­tion, and went fur­ther, say­ing: “When he won the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion in 1984, Vice Pres­i­dent Mon­dale made a bold and his­toric choice. He chose Con­gress­woman Geral­dine Fer­raro as his run­ning mate – the first woman to be nom­i­nat­ed as Vice Pres­i­dent on a major par­ty tick­et in Amer­i­can history.”

In Mondale’s words, he opened “a new door to the future,” through which Har­ris — the nation’s first female vice pres­i­dent — passed last November.

As Veep, Mon­dale set out to rede­fine the servi­tude that had char­ac­ter­ized his men­tor Hubert Humphrey’s rela­tion­ship to Lyn­don Baines Johnson.

LBJ had once kicked Humphrey – hard – in the shins, order­ing him to get going on a project. Fritz real­ized that, as a sea­soned D.C. hand, he was a major add-on to a tick­et head­ed by Carter, a for­mer Geor­gia governor.

He would prove his worth in debate, play­ing the decent alter­na­tive as Repub­li­can nom­i­nee Bob Dole glow­ered and snarled about “Demo­c­rat wars.”

Mon­dale insist­ed in play­ing the role as col­lab­o­ra­tor. He broke bread with Carter every week, had dai­ly access to nation­al secu­ri­ty brief­in­gs, and used his expe­ri­ence in the Sen­ate to help pass the Pana­ma Canal Treaty.

Wal­ter Mon­dale deliv­ers a speech dur­ing a vis­it to the Nether­lands in 1979, while serv­ing as Jim­my Carter’s vice pres­i­dent (Pho­to: Rob Bogaerts / Anefo)

He broke once with Carter but in pri­vate, furi­ous­ly ques­tion­ing the president’s 1979 speech in which Carter spoke of a “cri­sis of con­fi­dence” in the country.

The so-called “malaise” speech helped define a presidency.

It came as Carter was fir­ing mem­bers of his Cab­i­net, includ­ing Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary (and for­mer Wash­ing­ton House mem­ber) Brock Adams.

Mon­dale was prod­uct of Minnesota’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic-Farmer-Labor Par­ty, which entered the nation­al con­scious­ness with Humphrey’s civ­il rights speech at the 1948 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion. It was a par­ty com­mit­ted to civ­il rights, pro­gres­sive social spend­ing, and sus­tain­ing the fam­i­ly farm.

Alas, the DFL would pro­duce six­ty years of los­ing Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates: Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Mon­dale, and lat­er Amy Klobuchar.

Fritz had his turn in 1984, bare­ly beat­ing the insur­gency of Col­orado Sen­a­tor Gary Hart, only find him­self up against Ronald Reagan.

The choice of Fer­raro elec­tri­fied the par­ty. But the vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee became immersed in con­tro­ver­sy over her husband’s busi­ness finances.

Nor did Mon­dale help his chances with this line from his Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion accep­tance speech: “Let’s tell the truth. Mr. Rea­gan will raise tax­es, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

Way behind in the polls, he put aside attack pol­i­tics in favor of an upbeat respect­ful mes­sage in his first debate with the Gipper.

Rea­gan was caught off guard and deliv­ered a ram­bling per­for­mance in which he seem­ing­ly could not find the “city on a hill.” The Wall Street Jour­nal won­dered in a lead sto­ry whether the 73-year-old pres­i­dent was still up to the job.

The polit­i­cal car­toon­ist Pat Oliphant depict­ed Mon­dale as a David fig­ure with a sling­shot, stand­ing beside a dazed Rea­gan and say­ing: “Gee!”

In the sec­ond go-round, how­ev­er, Rea­gan had a game-decid­ing one-lin­er: “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this cam­paign. I am not going to exploit, for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es, my opponent’s youth and inex­pe­ri­ence.” (Mon­dale was fifty-six.) The Gip­per would win forty-nine states, with Mon­dale only car­ry­ing his native Min­neso­ta (by 3,500 votes) and the Dis­trict of Columbia.

As an elder states­man, how­ev­er, Mon­dale was an ide­al Ambas­sador to Japan. He, and Foley after him, dealt with the sen­si­tive issue of a large Amer­i­can troop pres­ence on Oki­nawa, and pub­li­cized sex­u­al assault cas­es involv­ing U.S. servicemembers.

When Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Paul Well­stone was killed in an air crash, Mon­dale stepped in as Sen­ate can­di­date in 2002, but lost to Repub­li­can Norm Cole­man. Fritz was actu­al­ly done in by rau­cous Well­stone sup­port­ers, who booed and jeered Repub­li­can con­gres­sion­al lead­ers who showed up for a pub­lic memo­r­i­al service.

Min­neso­ta, the ear­ly citadel of civ­il rights, is today on edge, the con­se­quence of two killings of Black men by police in the Twin Cities. Down­town Min­neapo­lis is board­ed up as a jury delib­er­ates the fate of the police offi­cer who held his knee to George Floyd’s neck for more than nine min­utes. The pro­gres­sivism of the North Star State is being ques­tioned in the nation­al news media.

The pro­gres­sivism of Fritz Mon­dale arguably wavered only once, when he delayed com­ing out against the Viet­nam War until the John­son-Humphrey admin­is­tra­tion left office. Oth­er­wise, he was a cham­pi­on of social jus­tice and social ser­vices, as was his late wife Joan Mon­dale, who died in 2014.

His lega­cy is best summed up by Al Gore, who once spoke of an his­tor­i­cal divide in the Amer­i­can vice pres­i­den­cy: before Wal­ter Mon­dale and after Wal­ter Mondale.