The Life off the Party

By KURT ANDERSEN

Wowing big groups and small, Ferraro is suddenly a heroine

Just a few days earlier she could go practically anywhere without being recognized, much less causing a stir. But in San Francisco last week Geraldine Ferraro was a mobile media event, her every public move and utterance analyzed for substance and style. Citizens thronged around her, and politicians of every color and creed embraced her. Some women cried as they touched her.

The extreme attention was natural. No woman had ever before run for national office on the ticket of a major party, and everybody wanted a closeup look at the pioneer. All week long she seemed at ease in the spotlight. Despite a few iffy moments, Ferraro held her own with the press. With partisan audiences she was unerring: in appearance after appearance she shrewdly ingratiated herself with the various sectors of the Democratic coalition, showing a rapid-fire fluency in the kind of person-to-person political happy talk that will be required for the next 15 weeks of campaigning.

As she prepared for that grind, Ferraro deferred in most matters to the vastly superior campaign expertise of the high-powered Mondale staff. When the week began, she was encamped in a 35th-floor Meridien Hotel suite, down the hall from her running mate, and her principal day-to-day operatives were mostly Mondale transfers. "I have these wonderful men who push me in and out of places," she said, moments after one of her new aides had guided her into a 40-minute meeting with TIME editors and correspondents. The ferocity of a vice-presidential candidate's schedule, she quickly learned, leaves hardly any time for leisurely schmoozing. "I never get to mill, "Ferraro complained, smiling. "Only a week, and I'm already out of touch."

She was unfortunately out of sight for most of the hundreds who gathered for her first open-to-the-public appearance: Ferraro and Mondale, speaking from the deeply sunken Halladie Plaza, could be seen only by people standing at the front of the crowd above. Nevertheless, the cheers were louder and longer during her short address than during her running mate's.

When she stepped onstage Monday afternoon for a women's political fund raiser, and the next morning at a women's caucus, she was received like a feminist superheroine, history incarnate. At the morning caucus session of 2,000 female delegates and alternates, she kept her remarks brief and understated, as she did in all of her joint appearances with Mondale. Yet, in five minutes the audience whooped and applauded ten times and chanted, "Gerry, Gerry, Gerry." Said she: "I need you. We all need each other." By remarkable coincidence, Ferraro's birthday--Aug. 26--is the date when women got the vote in 1920, and is now celebrated as Women's Equality Day.

Ferraro's most impressive performance came later, on Tuesday, when she addressed Governors from the South, a region unfamiliar to the New York City Congresswoman. But Ferraro's no-nonsense spontaneity turned the skeptics into devotees. "I know I talk funny," she joked to the group, most of whom, like her, do not pronounce the r in Georgia. "If you want me to come to your states, I will. If you don't think I can help, I won't." She reminded them of her bedrock bona fides: four years as a prosecutor, a decade as a housewife before taking that job, diehard support for Jimmy Carter. Alabama's Lieutenant Governor, Bill Baxley, was gushy. "You can mark me down as an enthusiastic convert," he said. "I had thought [her selection] was a mistake."

Wednesday she walked through a sort of ethnic-constituency checklist. The 103-member caucus of Asian-American delegates was flattered by her visit. To the Hispanic caucus she reiterated her opposition to the Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill and established some simpatia. "Have you ever noticed," the Italian-American candidate asked, "how Hispanics, like Italians, are so unemotional?" To the black caucus, she said, "I love you," but the response was cool: few black leaders were consulted beforehand about the choice of running mate, and many felt the convention had neglected black concerns. Said a male Jackson delegate: "She's just another white woman. She doesn't do anything for me."

In interviews she made a point of mentioning her motherly weekend plans. With Daughter Laura Zaccaro leaving on a European trip, said Ferraro, "I'm going home to Queens and do some shopping and get Laura packed for Europe." She was developing a stock (but legitimate) reply to journalists' stock (but legitimate) questions about her foreign policy inexperience. "I've been in the Congress for six years, voting on foreign affairs and national-security issues," she explained, then recited somewhat awkwardly the itinerary of her recent, remedial journeys (the Middle East, Central America, the Orient). Asked about her assertion that President Reagan is hypocritical for "calling himself a good Christian," while imposing "unfair" policies, she stood her ground. "I responded to an issue of whether or not I was a good Catholic," she explained. "As long as [the Republicans] don't determine whether I'm a good Catholic by my policies on the issues, I would be happy to leave the issue alone."

By Thursday, her San Francisco finale, Ferraro had hit her stride. Roman Catholic Mass with John Zaccaro, her husband. Breakfast with Mayor Dianne Feinstein. Lunch ($250 a plate) with 1,400 Democrats, where she delivered a hopeful, rah-rah speech. And, finally, her well-modulated prime-time acceptance speech, not too fast, not too fervid. "She did fine," said a veteran of the Carter White House. "But then all she really had to do was show up." That luxurious free ride will not last. As she sets out on the campaign, determined to really make history by winning in November, Geraldine Ferraro will not only have to show up again and again but be at her best nearly every time.

--By Kurt Andersen. Reported by John F. Stacks/San Francisco

With reporting by John F. Stacks/San Francisco