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NATIONAL | summer 2003
by Jennifer Jackman
When Carol Moseley Braun first considered running for office, she was told: "You can't win. The blacks won't vote for you because you are not part of the Chicago machine. The whites won't vote for you because you are black. And nobody will vote for you because you are a woman."
That was back in 1977, when she ran for Illinois state representitive. Imagine what people are saying now that she's announced her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. presidency.
"We've looked at the numbers, and we think we can make it happen," she says. "It's time to take the men-only sign off the White House door."
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Carol Moseley Braun.
(Photo by Alex Dorgan-Ross/AP Photo) |
Now 55, Moseley Braun won that first political contest. In 1992, she became the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate. But her Senate career ended after one term when she was outspent 3 to 1 by her opponent, amidst allegations of financial improprieties, but her campaign committee was neither fined nor sanctioned after an FEC audit. She later served as ambassador to New Zealand. When she returned to the United States, she thought about the Senate again. "But I concluded that this [Republican] crowd had our country so much on the wrong track that I had to run for president."
"Carol Moseley Braun's political power and potential are significant," says Kim Gandy president of the National Organization for Women. “With Carol at the table, women’s issues [including abortion rights, international
family planning, Title IX, welfare and affirmative action] will be central in shaping the election debate."
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