Who was the last Democratic vice presidential nominee announced during convention week?

a) Geraldine A. Ferraro

b) Walter F. Mondale

c) Al Gore

d) Lloyd Bentsen

Answer: b) Mondale, then a senator from Minnesota, was announced as presidential nominee Jimmy Carter’s running mate on July 15, 1976, three days into the four-day Democratic National Convention in New York City. Carter went on to win the general election narrowly over Republican incumbent Gerald R. Ford.

Mondale’s convention-week nomination was a continuation of longstanding political tradition. Through the 1960s, party insiders controlled the presidential nominations, which often weren’t decided until the conventions were held. But starting with the Democratic reform efforts aimed at opening the nominating process to the general electorate, which first took effect in 1972, primaries grew to play the decisive role in the selection of the presidential nominees, who increasingly locked up the top prize months before the conventions.

Mondale, who in 1980 was unseated with Carter by the Republican ticket headed by Ronald Reagan, clinched the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination but was considered an underdog as Reagan sought his second term. Mondale decided to try to shake things up by picking Ferraro, a House member from New York, as his vice presidential choice, making her the first (and still only) woman to run on a major party’s presidential ticket. The announcement came on July 12, four days before the Democratic convention began in San Francisco. Reagan went on to win in a landslide that November.

Subsequent Democratic vice presidential picks — Texas Sen. Bentsen, who ran with Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis in his unsuccessful 1988 bid against incumbent Republican Vice President George H.W. Bush; Tennessee Sen. Gore, who ran with Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton in his successful bid to unseat Bush in 1992 (and again as Clinton won re-election in 1996 over Republican former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole); and Connecticut Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, Gore’s running mate in his close and controversial 2000 loss to Texas Gov. George W. Bush — were named a week or less before the onset of those years’ Democratic conventions.

But Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, took a great leap earlier by announcing on July 6, 20 days before the start of the party’s convention in Boston, that he would run with North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, with whom he had competed for the top spot on the ticket. Kerry ended up losing narrowly as Bush won re-election. With this year’s Democratic convention in Denver scheduled to start Aug. 25, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the party’s presumed presidential nominee, would have to unveil his vice presidential choice no later than Aug. 4 in order to break Kerry’s record for an early announcement.

The July 3 CQ Politics trivia question showed that the last Republican picked for vice president during convention week was in 1988, when Indiana Sen. Dan Quayle was tapped by the elder Bush during the GOP gathering in New Orleans. The next time the vice presidential slot was up for grabs, in 1996, Dole announced former New York Rep. Jack F. Kemp as his VP choice two days before the beginning of the Republican convention in San Diego.