Carol Moseley Braun was a star — the first black woman to win a seat in the U.S. Senate, where she quickly made a name for herself by standing up to and defeating a powerful senator in a fight over the Confederate flag.
But that was long ago.
When Braun launches a campaign for Chicago mayor on Saturday, she'll have to reintroduce herself to many voters, including some who weren't even born the last time she won an election.
The 63-year-old Braun may try to recapture the breath-of-fresh-air enthusiasm that carried her to the Senate in 1992...Daley, who has led the country's third largest city for more than two decades, Braun will have to explain the miscues and embarrassing revelations that limited her to a single term — including a visit with a brutal Nigerian dictator — and overcome her years-long absence from public service.
Braun said she is ready to take on all her challengers and has nothing to hide.
"I want voters to look at it all because I've been delivering for the people of this town," Braun said this week in an interview with The Associated Press.
A former assistant U.S. attorney and state lawmaker, Braun was a relatively anonymous figure holding a relatively anonymous job — Cook County recorder of deeds — when she won a stunning Democratic primary victory over U.S...She went on to best little-known Republican Rich Williamson in the general election.
Within months, Braun had a Mr. Smith-Goes-To-Washington moment: She stared down conservative North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms, angrily promising to stand on the floor of the Senate "until this room freezes over" to stop the chamber from granting a patent on the United Daughters of the Confederacy insignia, which featured a Confederate flag.
When it was over, 23 senators who'd voted in favor of the patent changed their votes, and the patent — routinely approved in the past — was denied.
That victory, however, was eventually overshadowed by criticism of Braun.
She was excoriated by human rights activists when she met Nigerian dictator Gen. Sani Abacha, who'd been accused of human rights abuses, during a 1996 trip to Africa with her then-boyfriend. To make matters worse, Braun did not alert the State Department to her visit.
Braun explained she was traveling to Nigeria for a friend's funeral, and simply did not think to contact the State Department or tell the media, suggesting that she was the victim of a double standard.
"Other senators travel and they didn't have to call press conferences," she said.
There were never-proven stories that she misused campaign money left over from her 1992 race for personal luxuries, which she denies and the Justice Department twice declined an Internal Revenue Service request to take the case to a grand jury. She and her siblings were accused of dividing more than $20,000 of her mother's money that should have been used to reimburse her mother's nursing home — accusations that clearly are painful to this day.
"The truth is an absolute defense. And the truth is my mother did nothing wrong, I did nothing wrong," she said, her eyes welling up with tears.
Braun acknowledges that those episodes raised questions about her judgment, but insists she was a good senator.
"There's a whole list of bills that became law because I initiated it," she said, listing legislation to rebuild crumbling schools and to ensure pension equity for women. "I'm very proud, frankly, of my service to Illinois as senator."
Even so, some said that Braun was not effective as a senator because, as powerful as she might have seemed when she stood up to Helms, she never built the relationships senators need.
"She really didn't carve out a clear role in the Senate," said Kent Redfield, a professor emeritus of politics at the University of Illinois-Springfield. "Six years later, it was just this sense she was this unfocused accidental senator, (that) she just didn't do anything with the opportunity she had."
Braun lost re-election in 1998 to wealthy businessman Peter Fitzgerald, a Republican, then served as U.S. ambassador to New Zealand from 1999 to 2001.
In 2004, she attempted a political comeback by running for the Democratic nomination for president, which she jokingly acknowledges raised questions about her sanity. Braun said she decided to run after her niece noticed there were no pictures of women in a book about presidents.
"I'm going to get out here and make the case that a girl can be president, and that's exactly what I did," she said.
In 2005, Braun incorporated a new company to sell organic coffee, tea and spices. Her mayoral campaign would not disclose any information about the company's performance or how many employees she has, calling the information "proprietary."
Still, Braun suggests that her experience starting a business as the recession hit might resonate with voters.
"We sold our first tea bag in November 2007," she said. "So we have survived this recession and in the course of it I've had to go through and deal with the issues that every other small business has had to deal with."
Even so, she has been out of the public eye — unlike her opponents: former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, U.S. James Meeks, Chicago Clerk Miguel Del Valle and former Chicago school board president Gery Chico, who was chairman of the City Colleges of Chicago until he quit to run for mayor.
"She has the least visibility in the Chicago community, given her long period of absence" from politics, said DePaul University political scientist Michael Mezey.
But Braun said she is more qualified than any of the other candidates because of her varied background.
"I have the skill set ... to give the city the kind of leadership that it's going to need to address all of these issues that it faces, that we face as Chicagoans," she said.
