 Members of Ferraro 's family were indeed facing legal issues . Her husband John Zaccaro had pleaded guilty in January 1985 , to fraudulently obtaining bank financing in a real estate transaction and had been sentenced to 150 hours of community service . Then in October 1986 , he was indicted on unrelated felony charges regarding an alleged 1981 bribery of Queens Borough President Donald Manes concerning a cable television contract . A full year later , he was acquitted at trial . The case against him was circumstantial , a key prosecution witness proved unreliable , and the defense did not have to present its own testimony . Ferraro said her husband never would have been charged had she not run for vice president . Meanwhile , in February 1986 , the couple 's son John had been arrested for possession and sale of cocaine . He was convicted , and in June 1988 , sentenced to four months imprisonment ; Ferraro broke down in tears in court relating the stress the episode had placed on her family . Ferraro worked on an unpublished book about the conflicting rights between a free press and being able to have fair trials . Asked in September 1987 , whether she would have accepted the vice @-@ presidential nomination had she known of all the family problems that would follow , she said , " More than once I have sat down and said to myself , oh , God , I wish I had never gone through with it ... I think the candidacy opened a door for women in national politics , and I don 't regret that for one minute . I 'm proud of that . But I just wish it could have been done in a different way . " 
