Sunday, December 21, 2003

By Ann McFeatters, Post-Gazette National Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Carol Moseley Braun is running for president as the African-American, I-am-woman anti-Bush, and she's promising to draw all citizens who feel excluded into the mainstream of American political life.

"I don't look like him. I don't talk like him. I don't think like him. And I certainly don't act like him," she tells campaign audiences and the audiences invariably laugh.

Annie O'Neill, Post-GazetteCarol Moseley Braun Age: 56. Political experience: assistant U.S. attorney, 1973-1977; Illinois House of Representatives, 1979-1988; Cook County recorder of deeds, 1989-1993; U.S. senator from Illinois, 1993-1999; U.S. ambassador to New Zealand, 1999-2001. Education: B.A., University of Illinois at Chicago, 1968; J.D., University of Chicago Law School, 1972. Marital status: divorced from attorney Michael Braun. Children: Matthew, 26, a Pentagon computer engineer. Money raised: $342,500 (Oct. 15 report). Rank in fund raising: 8th of 9 Democrats. Signature issues: create a single-payer universal health-care system, roll back the Bush tax cuts, turn Iraq over to international control. Quote: "If I wanted to be a star, I would go to Hollywood or do what Oprah does and make money instead of getting kicked around." Website: www.carolforpresident.com Index to all Democratic candidate profiles

Moseley Braun barely registers in state or national polls, so it seems unlikely her candidacy will somehow take flight and attract widespread support among Democratic voters. But she is backed by some well-heeled feminist groups, and she is determined to stay in the race.

When Braun named Patricia Ireland, former president of NOW, as her third campaign manager in a campaign plagued with resignations. Ireland didn't exactly sound the trumpets while charging up the hill. "I have made a whole adult career out of tilting at windmills," she told reporters.

As the lone woman in a field of nine male Democrats, Moseley Braun, 56, joins a short historical list of female presidential candidates, including, most recently, Elizabeth Dole in 2000 and former Colorado congresswoman Pat Schroeder in 1987. Although Moseley Braun was the first black woman in U.S. history to win a Senate seat, she is not the first black woman to mount a national effort to run for the White House.

That came in 1972, when a feisty black Democratic congresswoman from Brooklyn, Rep. Shirley Chisolm, announced she was running. Chisolm lost the nomination to another liberal, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota.

Moseley Braun was elected to the Senate in 1992 from Illinois, riding the Democratic wave that swept Bill Clinton into office. But she was dumped by voters after one term and several scandals. As a consolation prize, the Clinton administration sent her as ambassador to New Zealand.

She insists that her experiences as a lawyer, as a homemaker, as a legislator, as a bureaucrat, as a divorced mother (her son is now 26), as a diplomat, as a teacher, as a consultant and even as a pecan farmer in Alabama have earned her credibility as a candidate.

Her campaign doesn't have eager, paid staffers in Iowa and New Hampshire, endless dollars flowing in through her Internet site (www.carolforpresident.com), or piles of position papers. Except for Al Sharpton, the black candidate from New York, she has raised less than any other candidate, only $342,500, compared with more than $25 million for Howard Dean.

But she is never short of words or ideas. She argues relentlessly for equal pay, a higher minimum wage and vigilance against the loss of a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. She is adamant that this country needs single-payer universal health care and insists it wouldn't cost "one dime more" than is being spent on health care now. She argues the war in Iraq was wrong but now America can't "cut and run." Asked about same-sex marriage, she said, "It seems to me that if people want to marry a person of a different race, that's no different than somebody wanting to marry someone of the same sex."

She says she tries not to take digs at her fellow Democrats but she often goes after Bush. She tells audiences that George W. Bush was elected president because of the black vote -- the vote of African American Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

It's been more than a decade since Moseley Braun was elected to office and an obvious question is what did she do during her six years in the Senate to make her qualified to be president. She claims credit for helping to create the Sacagawea dollar coin, working to improve the physical condition of the nation's schools, helping preserve the history of the Underground Railroad, working for pension benefits for widows, campaigning against urban brownfields, touting a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and consistently speaking out for equal opportunity and affirmative action. Some think her finest moment was a now-famous speech on the floor of the Senate when she denounced a move by then-Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., to provide a favor to the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

But she also had no qualms about seeking special treatment for her own constituents, including pushing ethanol in a bid to help Illinois farmers. She was appointed to the influential Senate Finance Committee where, she says, she learned "two things that are most often unspoken truths about finance. The first is that money is confidence. The second is that business runs on relationships."

After one term in the Senate, it was her narrow but ignominious defeat that left its mark on her career. A mention of her defeat in 1998 to the then-little-known Peter Fitzgerald, a rich conservative in a traditionally Democratic state, still makes her bristle. The defeat came after a rash of mini-scandals -- an investigation (later dropped) by the Federal Election Commission of alleged misuse of campaign funds, accepting an illegal sweetheart deal on a Chicago lake-front apartment, questions by the Internal Revenue Service, allegations of mismanagement and injudicious junketeering including a non-sanctioned trip to Nigeria at the request of the military junta that ruled the country.

Many of her former supporters said at the time they were tired of worrying about what might come next, but she still gets hot under the collar and denies doing anything wrong. She insists she was unfairly targeted because she's a woman. Whether or not she would ever agree she frittered away her Senate career, it's clear she'd like a second shot at national stature and national service, a comeback many male politicians before her have had.

And that's why, even as the spotlight lingers on frontrunner Howard Dean and she gets increasingly less national attention, she is still spotted on commercial flights bound for speaking engagements around the East Coast, in her unwrinkled St. John knit suits, her hair pulled back in a no-nonsense, easy-care chignon, her incandescent smile at the ready.

After the campaign, it would be interesting to hear her reflections on male and female candidates in 21st century America. For example, she has noted, ruefully, that even when she thrusts her hand out for a handshake, she gets a hug.

"I'm still trying to figure out why people hug me more. They give the men handshakes, but me they have to hug," she says.

At a campaign stop in Pittsburgh for a National Urban League forum, she found her luggage had been lost and she had nothing to wear but a running suit. She hustled to a department store, bought a new outfit and stopped by the cosmetic counter to have her makeup done -- for free.

Moseley Braun is tough-minded, loves a challenge and refuses to talk about getting out of the race or even idly speculate about the timetable. Her strategy is to make a splash in the Feb. 3 primary in South Carolina, where 40 percent of the primary voters are black. But even as she refuses to concede she won't be elected, her friends whisper it's well known she wouldn't mind a regular, well-paying, high-profile job in a Democratic administration.

Whatever the cost, Carol Moseley Braun is determined not to go down in history as an asterisk. In 1998, after she lost her bid for reelection to the Senate, she said, "Progress is never linear. You make steps forward, and then, sometimes, there are reverses."

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