(CNN) — Geraldine Ferraro, a former congresswoman and vice presidential candidate, has died, according to family statement. She was 75.
In 1984, Ferraro was the first female vice presidential candidate from a major U.S. political party when she ran with Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale.
A resident of New York City, Ferraro died in Massachusetts General Hospital, surrounded by loved ones, and the cause of death was complications from multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that she had battled for 12 years, according to a statement released by her family from Boston, Massachusetts.
“Geraldine Anne Ferraro Zaccaro was widely known as a leader, a fighter for justice, and a tireless advocate for those without a voice. To us, she was a wife, mother, grandmother and aunt, a woman devoted to and deeply loved by her family,” the family statement said. “Her courage and generosity of spirit throughout her life waging battles big and small, public and personal, will never be forgotten and will be sorely missed.”
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The family statement also described her as the “first Italian-American to run on a major party national ticket.”
The Mondale-Ferraro ticket lost by a landslide in 1984 to Republican incumbents President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush. In what became the second of Reagan’s two terms in the White House, the Reagan-Bush ticket won the popular vote 58.8% to 40% and then nearly swept the electoral votes, 525 to 13.
