On a Mission in a Political Second Act
By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 13, 2003; Page A01
Seventh in a series
washingtonpost.com
At a forum for Democratic presidential candidates, the men spoke mostly about taxes, the economy and war. Carol Moseley Braun, facing a largely female audience, spoke about a federal judicial nominee who believes abortion should be illegal and another who believes a wife should be subordinate to her husband.
She said President Bush's nominees are politically dangerous, and quoted some of their more forceful comments to make her point. By the time she finished speaking in a Washington hotel ballroom, a few eyes in the audience had narrowed in anger. Two women exchanged looks of disbelief, and another gasped.
Braun concluded with a reminder that she is the only woman in the race, then passed the collection plate. "We need your help," she said. "We need your checks. We need your networks, and we need your support."
One woman shot up out of her seat. "Where do we send the money?"
The May forum's audience was part of Braun's natural constituency -- it was sponsored by EMILY's List, which supports female candidates who favor abortion rights -- but Braun showed she still had the charisma that helped her become the first African American woman elected to the Senate, in 1992. Now, returning to politics after a fall from grace that led to her defeat six years later, Braun, 55, is trying to prove that she can connect on a larger stage.
"This woman has paved the way for all of us to come after her," said Elise Collins-Shields, a consultant who champions international causes. She wrote Braun a check at the forum. "She has shown so much courage by showing up," Collins-Shields said. "I believe women do things differently, and I believe that's what's going to have to happen."
But Braun faces considerable obstacles as she attempts to write a political sequel. Her fundraising is almost insignificant, and she has had staff turnover because of payment disputes. Analysts say she is still viewed by political Washington and Illinois Democrats as someone who undermined her extraordinary promise with bad judgment in handling family and campaign money, and in traveling to Nigeria when it was ruled by a murderous dictator. Her post-defeat appointment as ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, they say, is seen as a bittersweet parting gift from President Bill Clinton.
Braun has ignored the criticism, except to note that a Federal Election Commission investigation of her campaign finances found only $311 unaccounted for, instead of the hundreds of thousands originally alleged, and that the IRS and the Justice Department declined to investigate or sanction her.
She is running for the presidency, she said, because she feels an obligation to try to defeat Bush. "I believe this country is on the wrong track," she said. "Our economy is in the doldrums. Not because of any natural phenomenon or even the threat of war, but because of failed leadership."
In Vermont, Illinois, South Carolina and Washington, Braun has railed against the president for turning a budget surplus into a deficit and fouling up a robust economy. In their zeal for war, she says, the Republicans, led by Bush, have stripped away too many civil liberties.
But some people -- including some supporters -- say she sounds like nearly every other Democratic candidate in the race. As a symbol of the electoral "Year of the Woman" in 1992, Braun should focus on issues that women care about, political consultants and Democratic Party strategists said.
When she heard that criticism during a breakfast interview, Braun put down her English muffin and leaned across the table. "I don't put people in a box," she said. "I speak my mind and hope people will agree to join me."
Still, the generic tenor of her candidacy -- and, even more so, her political history -- has prompted speculation on her reasons for running.
FoxNews.com and other media outlets have reported that Democratic strategists asked Braun to enter the primary to prevent Al Sharpton, the other African American candidate, from monopolizing the black vote and using it to gain influence in the party, as Jesse L. Jackson did in 1984 and 1988.
"That is arrogant and demeans the intelligence of voters and is a flat-out, blatant lie," Braun said.
Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist, also derided the idea. "This is Internet gossip, that Carol is running for the black vote," she said.
Eric Adelstein, a Chicago political consultant who has worked for Braun, said she might be running in the hope of clearing her name. Braun acknowledged that might be a byproduct of her campaign, but said it was hardly her impetus. More important, she said, was her belief that her campaign "will give voice to the millions of people who want us to come together to provide for the security and harmony of the whole community."
Maybe, Braun suggested, those who speculate don't know what they're talking about when it comes to her history. "I've won 14 elections. I lost one, and narrowly," she said. "There are people in this race who are running for a second time. There are people who've never been elected at all. I just don't see that as an impediment to my electability in any way."
But there is one impediment that Braun cannot ignore: money, or the lack of it. Competing against candidates who raised as much as $7 million in the second quarter, Braun raised $150,000, according to her campaign. Several staff members have quit because she couldn't make the payroll, said Jocelyn Woodards, who was Braun's national field director until she, too, quit.
A spokeswoman for the campaign, Hope Daniels, said the staff exodus was partly the result of a decision to consolidate the campaign in Chicago. "We're here, and we're getting paid," she said.
Braun has campaigned on a shoestring budget before. In 1992, she was the third candidate in a Democratic primary to represent Illinois in the Senate. The big spenders were white males, former senator Alan Dixon and trial lawyer Al Hofeld.
Braun scurried to raise $500,000 late in the campaign and waited for her moment. A few days before the election, she launched television ads, surged ahead in the polls and won.
It was an improbable accomplishment for a woman born in a segregated hospital in 1947, to Joseph Moseley, a police officer, and his wife, Edna, a hospital technician. At times, Braun said, they were a model black Roman Catholic family, but at other times her father beat her. When he left home for good, in Braun's teenage years, she cared for her siblings while her mother worked.
She earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1969; while attending law school at the University of Chicago, she met a white student named Michael Braun. A few years later, they married, taking a bold step in what was then a largely segregated city. They moved to racially mixed Hyde Park and started rearing their son, but the marriage eventually fell victim to the pressures of her political life.
Braun entered politics in the mid-1970s, working on behalf of Harold Washington, who would become Chicago's first black mayor in 1983.
Her pursuit of elective office started after she led neighbors in a fight against a Chicago parks department plan to build a golf driving range in an area where birds were nesting. They lost to City Hall, but Braun impressed the right people and was encouraged to run for the Illinois General Assembly. In 1978, she won a seat and stayed for about 10 years, when she was elected Cook County recorder of deeds. From that post, she launched her 1992 Senate campaign and became a much-celebrated victor in a wave that swept and four women into that chamber and 47 into the House.
The following July, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) sponsored a proposal to renew a design patent for the insignia of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which included a Confederate flag. After his colleagues signaled their intention to approve it, Braun delivered a searing speech in which she promised to filibuster the proposal "until this room freezes over." What that flag symbolized, she said, "has no place in our modern times, . . . no place in this body, . . . no place in this society."
A chastised Senate killed the proposal by a 75 to 25 vote.
That event only burnished her electoral victory, but trouble soon followed. During her term, Braun would author legislation to provide federal funds to repair public schools and become a forceful advocate of efforts to expand pension benefits to women, extend credit to farmers and clean up polluted industrial sites. What made a bigger impression, however, were her finances and her travel.
There were allegations that she tried to divide a $28,000 windfall meant for her mother's use without using any of the money to defray the Medicaid costs of her mother's nursing home care. After an investigation, Braun paid the state $15,000 to satisfy the debt.
After it was discovered that 138 campaign contributors to Braun exceeded the $1,000 limit and $249,000 in campaign funds was unaccounted for, she faced an FEC investigation. That probe, one of several into senators' campaigns, concluded that most of the money had been refunded and resulted in no penalty against Braun's campaign.
She was also accused of ignoring allegations of sexual harassment against her campaign manager and one-time fiancé, Kgosie Matthews. But her trips to Nigeria -- about a half-dozen, all privately financed, she said -- were a bigger concern.
The most controversial was the last, in 1996, to attend a memorial service for her friend Ibrahim Abacha, who had died in a plane crash. She traveled against the wishes of the State Department -- Abacha's father, Gen. Sani Abacha, was a dictator whose egregious human-rights record included ordering the execution of Nobel Prize-winning author Ken Saro-Wiwa. Even Braun's colleagues in the Congressional Black Caucus criticized the trip.
In November 1999, as she faced a confirmation hearing before former colleagues on her ambassadorship, Braun said she only wanted to honor her deceased friend. "I certainly meant no harm to our policies," she said.
About the allegations of financial improprieties, she said then, "I hope that this hearing . . . will finally put the stake in the heart of something that wasn't true when it was first said, and remains untrue."
Looking back, Braun sees those events as a sort of test. Her view is that conservative critics "did everything they could to ruin me." And: "They failed, I'd like to think." Looking forward, she said, "I'm in this to win."
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