The Daily Escape:
Flying Saucer plants at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Tucson AZ â April 19, 2021 photo via Visit Tucson
This is a long post by Joe Trippi about Walter âFritzâ Mondale. Mondale died last Monday. You should read to the end.
Trippi is a Democratic political operative who managed the 2004 Howard Dean presidential campaign. Recently, he was a senior advisor to Doug Jonesâs successful Senate run in 2017.
Trippi cut his political teeth in Ted Kennedyâs unsuccessful run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1979. By 1983, he was 27, and working for Walter Mondaleâs unsuccessful 1984 presidential run. After Mondaleâs death this week, Trippi published this twitter thread with a picture of a boxing glove, and a personal story about the kind of man Mondale was. First, the boxing glove:
â1/ The story of these gloves will tell you the kind of man Fritz Mondale was and why he meant so much to me. Please take the time to read this thread â and wait for it. Itâs worth it.
2/ In December 1983, I was in my 20âs and running Iowa for Fritz.
At the end of every campaign swing through Iowa â Fritz would almost always end the trip the same wayâŚ.3/ After loading the campaign plane…with traveling staff and a huge press corps that were assigned to a front-running campaign back thenâŚ.
4/ Fritz would come down the steps of the plane and take me on a stroll around the tarmac 2 or 3 times before rebounding the plane to…some other state. The conversation always ended the same wayâŚ
5/ Fritz explaining that he could not lose Iowa and that he was counting on âThe Hogsâ (the name Mondale Iowa campaign staff proudly called ourselves) to do everything we could to make sure he won a must win state. âDonât let up. Keep fightingâ and back on the plane he wentâŚ
6/ But we also talked about all kinds of things before we got to the âno pressure, just donât blow itâ part. One day as we walked around the plane â we got to talking about my family. Fritz asked a dreaded question about my fatherâŚ.
7/ I explained to Fritz that my father had stopped talking to me 5 years earlier, when I left college to join the Kennedy campaign in 1979. My dad was old school Italian â I was supposed to take over his flower shop â not go to college, or run off to become a political hackâŚ
8/ Fritz asked a few more questions and then joked with me that my dad was wrong about a lot of things but maybe I should have listened to him about going to work for Kennedy. I was one of only a handful of Kennedy operatives hired in the Mondale campaignâŚ
9/ I was lucky to have worked for them both. But at the time there was still a lot of bad blood â luckily, Fritz was joking. And I was relieved when he got to the â âwin Iowaâ partâŚ
10/ About a month Later, we won Iowa with 49% of the vote and with Gary Hart taking a distant 2nd, But that was enough to get Hart the media spotlight and the momentum he needed to win New Hampshire and the Hart rocket was roaringâŚ.
11/ After a string of loses to Hart, âfighting Fritzâ emerged as the narrative of the campaign. Mondale would walk on to the stage at rally after rally and thrust these gloves in the air and speak from the heart about who he was fighting forâŚ
12/ I remember traveling with him to a meat packing plant & Fritz bellowing âShow me your hands!â My jaw dropped as plant worker after worker thrust a hand in the air with fingers missing lost on the job. I had no idea, but Fritz did. And thatâs who he was fighting forâŚ
13/And so the campaign put out the word to the press that Fritz would carry those gloves and carry on the fight til he broke the string of losses to Hart. Time and delegates were running out on us and the delegate rich Pennsylvania primary was looming as critical to our causeâŚ
14/ If I had nightmares about losing Iowa (and I did) they were nowhere near those I had in Pennsylvania. I was sent in as state director of Pennsylvania in March when we were down by 14 points. The Pennsylvania Primary would be held in April â months after winning IowaâŚ
15/ And so for a month â Fritz and I did the tarmac walk thing again. No Pressure but fighting Fritz needs you and all the staff to ânot let up, remember who we are fighting forââŚ
16/ It was a comeback win of all comeback wins I have ever been part of â only Doug Jones win in 2017 compares to it. But Fritz won Pennsylvania â and with it regained the momentum to move towards being the Democratic nomineeâŚ.
17/ After the polls closed and the networks called Pennsylvania for Fritz. I got a call in the boiler room. David Lillehaug, then the aide that traveled with Fritz (and would later serve as an Associate Justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court) was on the lineâŚ
18/ âJoe, Fritz wants to see you before he goes down to the ballroom to make his victory speech, get up here quickâ. I rushed to the elevator and up to Fritzâs hotel suiteâŚ
19/ when I walked through the door there was Fritz Mondale, sitting down and explaining to an old Italian guy that his son was âin an honorable profession. Fighting for people who were down and hurting â heâs making a difference â I count on him and you need to know that ââŚ.
20/ Fritz Mondale had remembered a story I had told him months and months ago â eons in the life of a Presidential campaign. He had somehow gotten someone to locate my dad and get him to Philadelphia to be there on Primary night and bring us together to reconcileâŚ
21/ I still tear up thinking about this moment of my life that shows the kind of man Walter âFritzâ Mondale was. David Lillehaug broke the spell as my father hugged me… âSir we have to get downstairs for your speechâ and handed Fritz his âfighting Fritzâ glovesâŚ.
22/ Fritz turned & said âI donât need these anymoreâ took out a felt tip and wrote âTo Rocky Trippi, with thanksâ Fritz Mondale. Handed me the gloves , grabbed my dad, brought him with to the ballroom and dragged him on stage to stand with him as Fritz declared victoryâŚ
23/ Years later when my father passed away, I gently tucked one of the gloves with him to rest with him.
This one remains with me as homage to a man that touched my life like few others. RIP Fritzâ
Mondale didnât have a chance against Ronald Reagan in 1984, but he had a long, successful career in the US Senate, as vice president, and as ambassador to Japan.
Most of all, he was a decent man who never took himself too seriously. May we all have such a legacy.
Letâs close with soothing Saturday music. Listen to âTake Fiveâ written by Paul Desmond, and famously recorded by Dave Brubeck in 1959. Here itâs played by the Camaleon Bassoon Quartet, who are  members of the bassoon section of the SĂŁo Paulo Symphony Orchestra. Who ever heard of Jazz bassoon?
