|
The first
African-American woman elected to the U.S. Senate and a former
ambassador to New Zealand, presidential hopeful Carol Moseley
Braun does not carry the highest profile of the crowded Democratic
field, but has still managed to win favor with voters with her
determination and idealism.
"Nobody
ever thought I would win an election -- not at the county level,
not at the state level, not to the Senate," Braun told the
Los Angeles Times in July. "But mine is the face of the American
dream -- it's just black and female."
Political
analysts have praised her trademark ability to stay on message
during early debates, particularly in light of the political barbs
flying among other candidates.
"The
only candidates to have even a decent night were Carol Moseley
Braun and Al Sharpton," Slate's Chris Suellentrop wrote,
after a late-October debate in Detroit.
"[S]he
had the cleverest closing statement, calling herself the candidate
who is 'the clearest alternative to George W. Bush. I don't look
like him, I don't talk like him, I don't act like him, I don't
think like him,'" said Suellentrop's dispatch.
But her career
has also been marred by significant political missteps, so much
so that Illinois voters chose to oust her after only one term
in the Senate.
The daughter
of a police officer and a medical technician, Braun was
born in Chicago in 1947. She grew up on the city's South Side
during an era of racial tension and discord.
A graduate
of Chicago Public Schools, she attended the University of Illinois
and went on to earn her law degree from the University of Chicago
in 1972. Her public service career began soon after when she joined
the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago in 1973, where she worked
for four years.
In 1978, at
age 31, Braun was elected to the Illinois legislature.
She passed one of her first bills, designed to provide more money
to recipients of public aid, after personally lobbying each of
the 176 legislators.
"Nothing
has ever been easy for Carol," Alice Tregay, a veteran Chicago
political activist who worked on Braun's later campaign
for the Senate, told the Associated Press. "When you challenge
her, she becomes a lot better. When you tell her she can't win,
she says, 'OK, let me put my best foot forward.'"
Braun
left the state legislature in 1987. She served one term as recorder
of deeds for Cook County in 1989 before turning her sights on
Capitol Hill.
In 1992, Braun decided the time was right to challenge incumbent Sen. Alan
Dixon for a seat on the U.S. Senate.
Dixon, a veteran
politician with 40 years in public office, was one of 11 Democrats
who voted to confirm conservative judge Clarence Thomas to the
Supreme Court -- a hot topic of discontent among left-leaning
voters, especially women.
While Dixon
traded accusations with a third contender, lawyer Al Hofeld, in
the days leading up to the primary, Braun stayed focused
and upbeat. That strategy paid off when she won the Democratic
nomination with 38 percent of the vote to Dixon's 35.
Democrats
quickly embraced Braun, and her campaign was propelled
forward by a groundswell of constituent support and campaign contributions.
She also managed to smooth over a flap involving her decision
to split an inheritance owed to her mother, a Medicaid recipient
who resided in a nursing home, among her and her siblings. Braun eventually paid the state $15,000 to defray her mother's
Medicaid costs.
She went on
to win the Senate seat, defeating Republican Rich Williamson,
a former aide to President Reagan, with 53 percent of the vote.
With her win, she simultaneously became the first female senator
from Illinois, as well as history's first female African-American
senator and first African-American Democratic senator.
"In the
1992 general (election), Chicago area voters were in a mood for
racial reconciliation, and there was no easier way to signal that
than to vote for the intelligent, always smiling Moseley Braun,"
the Almanac of American Politics notes of her bid.
Braun covered
considerable political ground once in the Senate, showing a tenacity
and ability to take on even the most veteran lawmakers, including
Republican Jesse Helms. In 1993, 
Braun successfully fought off a bid by the North Carolina senator
to renew a design patent for the United Daughters of the Confederacy's
insignia, which included a Confederate symbol.
While on Capitol
Hill, her legislative record racked up quickly, including work
on welfare reform, education, farming issues and extending pension
benefits to women while keeping a special eye toward Illinois
business interests. In addition, she served on the Banking, Judiciary
and Finance committees.
But controversy
followed soon thereafter. Braun had suffered earlier criticism
for taking a month-long trip to Africa with her then-boyfriend
and former campaign manager, Kgosie Matthews, after the 1992 election
where they allegedly spent some $281,000 in campaign funds, according
to media reports. Then, in 1996, Braun traveled again
to Africa, this time to Nigeria for a "private" visit
to attend a memorial service.
During that
trip, she and Matthews, a former registered agent of the Nigerian
government, personally visited with former Nigerian dictator Gen.
Sani Abacha -- without the advance approval of the State Department,
which had been pressing the Nigerian government on a number of
human rights issues and democratic reforms.
The trip,
combined with Braun's apparent befriending of the internationally
maligned Abacha and his family, proved politically disastrous.
While initially defending her trip as an attempt at "quiet
diplomacy" Braun later admitted she "erred in
the handling of the whole issue of my private travel," according
to the Almanac of American Politics.
During her
tenure in the Senate, she also fended off concerns regarding her
1992 campaign finance records including unaccounted for funds
and contributions exceeding the $1,000 limit. A Federal Election
Commission audit eventually revealed that her bookkeeping was
disorganized and found only a small accounting mistake. She was
not fined for the errors.
In 1998, Braun
ran for reelection against millionaire Republican state Sen. Peter
Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald easily outspent Braun, who had a difficult
time shaking off the scandals that had rocked her previous term
despite her acknowledgment in campaign ads that "I've made
mistakes and disappointed some people."
"She's
spent more time in Nigeria over the last six years than she has
in Peoria," Fitzgerald said of Braun during the race.
Braun
lost her reelection bid to Fitzgerald by 4 percentage points.
"There's
a superstitious side to Carol," Alton Miller, one of Braun's first campaign spokesmen in 1992, told the Associated
Press. "I think she believes that she's charmed more than
she has a right to believe that. And I think she thought that
good luck had a lot to do with 1992, and she expected that same
luck to hold in 1998."
After her
loss, President Clinton named her special consultant to the Department
of Education on school construction and later nominated her to
be U.S. ambassador to New Zealand. The Senate approved her ambassadorship
by a vote of 98-2.
She served
as an ambassador from 1999 to 2001, where her portfolio included
New Zealand, Samoa, the Cook Islands and Antarctica. According
to her campaign biography, she calls her role during this time,
"Ambassador to Paradise."
Upon her return
to Illinois, she opened a business law and consulting practice
and taught classes at DePaul University.
Braun,
who is divorced, has one son, Matthew.
--
By Maureen Hoch, Online NewsHour
|
