Former Senator and Jimmy Carter’s Vice President Walter Mondale died Monday of undisclosed causes.
But the 93-year-old Minnesotan knew the end was near. He made a round of weekend farewell calls to Democratic friends, including Joe Biden, a close political pal from their Senate days together (1964-1976).
A small-town Midwestern native, a minister’s son and student of Hubert Humphrey, Mondale was a decent, interesting man, one of those political dinosaurs, now long extinct, who could remain friends with opponents who were not progressives like himself. Opponents, in turn, returned the favor.
In those days before cable TV, senators of both parties shared a strange belief that compromise could produce half a loaf for each side. They deemed this better than bitterness for everyone and no loaves for anyone, themselves or voters back home. Versus staged acrimonious sound bites for partisan viewers. You may have noticed those cross-aisle days have given
Walter Mondale created the modern vice presidency
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Mondale lost the presidency but permanently changed the office of vice presidency
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Fight Over Right to Work Evokes History of Richmond Unions
In this Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2021, file photo, Michael Foster of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union holds a sign outside an Amazon facility where labor is trying to organize workers in Bessemer, Ala. Despite the strongest public support and the most sympathetic president in years, the American labor movement just suffered a stinging defeat. Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer, overwhelmingly voted against joining the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in much-anticipated election results announced Friday, April 9. (Photo: Jay Reeves/AP Photo)
Virginia has one of the lowest union membership rates of any state. In 2020, only 4.4% of Virginia workers were union members, fifth lowest in the nation. But unions have a long history in the commonwealth, flourishing around the turn of the 20th century in industrial Richmond and the coalfields of the Southwest before union density began to fall in the 1950s. �