MINNEAPOLIS — Former Vice President Walter F. Mondale, a liberal icon who lost the most lopsided presidential election after bluntly telling voters to expect a tax increase if he won, died Monday. He was 93.

The death of the former senator, ambassador and Minnesota attorney general was announced in a statement from his family. No cause was cited.Mondale followed the trail blazed by his political mentor, Hubert H. Humphrey, from Minnesota politics to the U.S. Senate and the vice presidency, serving under Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.In a statement Monday night, Carter said he considered Mondale “the best vice president in our country's history.” He added: “Fritz Mondale provided us all with a model for public service and private behavior.”Mondale's own try for the White House, in 1984, came at the zenith of Ronald Reagan's popularity. His selection of Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York as his running mate made him the first major-party presidential nominee to put a woman on the ticket, but his declaration that he would raise taxes helped define the race.On Election Day, he carried only his home state and the District of Columbia. The electoral vote was 525-13 for Reagan — the biggest landslide in the Electoral College since Franklin Roosevelt defeated Alf Landon in 1936. (Sen. George McGovern got 17 electoral votes in his 1972 defeat, winning Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.)“I did my best,” Mondale said the day after the election, and blamed no one but himself.“I think you know I've never really warmed up to television,” he said. “In fairness to television, it never really warmed up to me.”Years later, Mondale said his campaign message had proven to be the right one.“History has vindicated me that we would have to raise taxes,” he said. “It was very unpopular, but it was undeniably correct.”Mondale and his wife, Joan Adams Mondale, were married in 1955. During his vice presidency, she pushed for more government support of the arts and gained the nickname “Joan of Art.” She had minored in art in college and worked at museums in Boston and Minneapolis.The couple had two sons, Ted and William, and a daughter, Eleanor. Eleanor Mondale became a broadcast journalist and TV host, with credits including “CBS This Morning” and programs with E! Entertainment Television.Ted Mondale served six years in the Minnesota Senate and made an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1998. William Mondale served for a time as an assistant attorney general.Joan Mondale died in 2014 at age 83 after an extended illness.

Walter Mondale