Walter Mondale was a liberal Democrat, active in the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. He served as state attorney general from 1960-1964. When Hubert Humphrey became vice president in 1964, Mondale was appointed to replace him in the U.S. Senate, where he served until 1977. In 1976 Jimmy Carter chose Mondale to be his vice president. In 1984 Mondale, as the Democratic presidential nominee, became the first major-party candidate to choose a woman, Geraldine Ferraro, as a running mate. After the Mondale-Ferraro ticket lost to the incumbent Ronald Reagan, Mondale continued to be involved in politics, serving as U.S. ambassador to Japan from 1993 to 1996, and stepping in for Paul Wellstone, who died in an airplane accident running for his third Senate term in 2002. Mondale lost the race to Norm Coleman.