NY Times: In Seeking Presidency, Braun could win back reputation

[La_Serpiente]

In Seeking Presidency, Braun Could Win Back Reputation



After driving around Pine Bluff, Ark., for 20 minutes, turning into parking lots twice to try out new directions, Carol Moseley Braun and her aide finally pulled over. They were looking for somewhere to eat supper. They rolled a window down and called out to two young people on a corner: Which way was downtown?

It had been that kind of day. Hours earlier, because of an airline mixup, Ms. Braun had missed a flight to Arkansas — and with it a chance to be introduced to 10,000 football fans at the homecoming game for the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.

This is Ms. Braun's life in pursuit of the Democratic presidential nomination. She pays nine workers. She has no field offices in New Hampshire or Iowa. As of this fall, she had raised just $350,000 for the year — a speck in a sea of campaign cash. Hers certainly does not look like a realistic run to the White House.

Though she made history a decade ago as the first African-American woman in the United States Senate, she lost her job after one term, her reputation clouded by accusations of ethical misconduct. Now she falls in the lower chunk of Democratic candidates in most polls. She cannot be running to win.

Ms. Braun, 56, is here, her allies say, to bring a different perspective to the political dialogue — to talk about women, about African-Americans, about the same ordinary people her father would not stop talking about in the late 70's, when Ms. Braun first ran for office in Illinois. Her father, as she retells the story, drove the streets of the Chicago South Side in a battered green station wagon, blaring his message from a bullhorn: "Fight the greedy, help the needy, vote for Carol Moseley Braun!"

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In Seeking Presidency, Bruan could win back reputation

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