Minnesota Attorney General
1960 – 1964
On May 5, 1960, Walter Mondale took the oath of office as Minnesota's twenty-third attorney general. At the age of thirty-two, he became the youngest attorney general in the nation, having been appointed to the position by Governor Orville Freeman. Mondale had become deeply active in politics through his work for the political campaigns of Freeman and Hubert Humphrey. As Mondale later said of Senator and Vice President Humphrey, in particular: “he was my mentor, friend and colleague. He believed that government should make people’s lives better.” The two would remain close throughout their careers.
As Minnesota’s attorney general, Mondale emerged as a reformer. His office uncovered serious fund-raising fraud among officials at the Sister Elizabeth Kenny Foundation and sued a predatory furnace repair company not long into his tenure. Mondale also established consumer-protection, antitrust, and civil rights departments. When he ran for a second term as attorney general in 1962, he was re-elected with one of the largest majorities in Minnesota history.
Another early achievement came with Mondale’s role in Gideon v. Wainwright, the landmark constitutional case. In 1962, felony burglary convict Clarence Earl Gideon petitioned the Supreme Court because he had not been afforded his constitutional right to counsel. Mondale rallied twenty-three state attorneys general to sign an amicus brief in support of Gideon’s claims. Mondale had been counselled by one of his former UMN Law School professors, Yale Kamisar, one of the nation’s leading authorities on criminal due process. In Gideon v. Wainwright (1963), the Supreme Court unanimously agreed that felony defendants had a right to court-appointed counsel even in state courts.
Mondale also established himself as a rising star on the national political scene. He was a key player at the 1964 Democratic Convention, responsible for negotiating a crucial compromise with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the right of the regular all-white delegation to represent the state. The deal was a step in the transformation of the Southern Democratic party into an integrated and inclusive body.