Long before Sarah Palin, there was Beatrice Mooney, a perennial candidate in Minnesota who saw the potential of a woman in the vice presidency and hoped her quest for high public office would land her there.
"I believe a woman is needed in a high government position because we are versatile," Mooney said in a Star Tribune interview in 1979, when as a political unknown she decided to run for president with no financial backing.
Mooney, 91, died Sept. 23 in Buffalo, Minn. She was an independent thinker and social activist for much of her life, said her son, Mike Mooney of Buffalo.
"She had ideas of her own and wanted to do things her way," he said.
Lacking fame and fortune, Beatrice Mooney nevertheless plunged into politics, parlaying her long career as a nurse into campaigns for better education and experience in health fields. She ran, as an Independent-Republican, for the U.S. Senate in 1976, for governor in 1978, 1982 and 1990, and for president in 1980, 1984 and 1988.
Although she got little attention for her ideas, her platforms included a call for more recycling, controls on commercial aviation and natural gas prices, reduced taxes and improvements in elementary education, according to campaign statements she made 30 years ago.
She also opposed war and munitions production, and because of that and other issues was an Independent-Republican in name only, her son said.
"It was kind of a sidelight for her," Mike Mooney said of his mother's political ambitions. "In terms of the scale of politics, this was a very minor ripple."
