Carol Moseley Braun’s Unlikely Second Act
(Uncovered Politics) — The nation’s first black female Senator, who was defeated in her 1998 bid for re-election, announced in early 2003 that she was forming an exploratory committee to run for the Democratic nomination for president. Carol Moseley Braun, now a leading candidate for mayor of Chicago, seemed an unlikely presidential candidate because her time in Washington was so rocky. NPR’s Ken Rudin explained: “If there was tremendous promise in Carol Moseley Braun’s career in 1992, it had very much dissipated by 1998. There was a sense that she had squandered a tremendous opportunity. For starters, she was accused of (though never formally charged with) campaign finance irregularities, her then-fiance (and campaign manager) was accused of sexual harassment by female campaign workers, and her “private” trip to Nigeria in 1996, where she visited with and defended dictator Sani Abacha, was widely panned, even by many Democrats.”
