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NATIONAL
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Moseley-Braun Says Her Potential Presidential Bid Won’t Divide Blacks
by Hazel Trice Edney
WASHINGTON (NNPA)—Former U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun says if she decides to run for president, it should not be viewed as a contest that pits one African-American against another one.
“It really is a disservice to Rev. Sharpton and to me to suggest that we are somehow or another in competition with one another,” she says. “The fact of the matter is that I am no more in competition with Al Sharpton than is Dick Gephardt, John Edwards, Joe Lieberman or anybody else.”
The NNPA News Service disclosed last fall that Moseley-Braun, a law professor at DePaul University in Chicago, was considering a presidential bid. She officially formed an exploratory committee by filing the requisite papers earlier this week.
“Hey, more power!” says Moseley-Braun, rejecting speculation that Democrats have recruited her in order to dilute support for New York activist Al Sharpton. Moseley-Braun, the first African-American woman to serve in the U.S. Senate, is viewed as a more conciliatory politician.
Sharpton had earlier filed papers to form his presidential exploratory committee and has begun raising funds.
Not everyone is excited about the prospect of Mosely-Braun, who failed to get re-elected to the Senate five years ago, entering the race.
“Many were disappointed that she hadn’t performed as strongly as we’d hoped one would. She lost based on a deflationary feeling about her performance,” says Dianne Pinderhughes, a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “[The Black vote] didn’t defect to [her Republican opponent]. It just didn’t have the turnout.”
Pinderhughes says that Moseley-Braun’s legislative record left a lot to be desired in the Black community. Early in her tenure, she earned two Cs on the NAACP civil rights report card.
Moseley-Braun has her supporters as well.
Among them is C. Delores Tucker, chairwoman of the non-partisan National Congress of Black Women. Tucker and Moseley-Braun were among 250 women who formed the Future Political Action Committee last September to support Black women candidates for public office.
Tucker says that if Moseley-Braun does not get the top slot and ends up as the party’s vice presidential nominee, it will be considered a victory. “She has skills that some candidates don’t bring to the table and certainly it would be nice to have a woman there,” says Tucker.
At the rate the Democrats have been losing lately, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe will be glad to see any member of his party taking back the White House.
“In fairness, the media focus was on Sept. 11 and the war against Iraq, so it was very difficult for our Democratic leaders in the House and the Senate to get the message out,” McAuliffe says, trying to explain how Republicans regained control of the Senate and increased their control of the House in last November’s election. “That will not be the case in 2004. We will be dealing with the aftermath of Iraq. And we will still be dealing with the horrible economy that George Bush created in this country.”
In addition to Sharpton and Moseley-Braun, the other Democratic candidates are Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri, Senators John Edwards of North Carolina, Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont.
In the wake of the post Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, the Democrats have been in a quandary. They have wanted to appear supportive of President Bush during a time of crisis but wanted to maintain a separate identity as competing Democrats. By all accounts, they have failed.
“They’re going to have to distinguish themselves this time,” says Pinderhughes, the political scientist from the University of Illinois. “They can’t agree with [Bush] all the time like they did in 2002.”
With Bush having proposed a budget plan that will amass deficits exceeding $1 trillion over the next decade while providing tax cuts that will go mostly to the rich, Democrats feel that Republican incumbents can be defeated in 2004.
Even on the war issue, Bush is vulnerable, according to Moseley-Braun, who served as U.S. ambassador to New Zealand after her loss in 1998 to Republican Peter Fitzgerald.
“It is a shame that we have frittered away the good will that we had around the world following Sept. 11 by not listening to the voices that want us to approach this fight in a way that is consistent with everybody else who wants to fight this fight,” she says. “It should be done through diplomacy and through a world-wide effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power.”
Democrats, who normally attract 80 percent to 90 percent of the Black vote in national elections, also hope that Republicans have been damaged by Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott’s belated support of retired Sen. Strom Thurmond’s 1948 segregationist campaign for president and the Bush’s administration’s opposition to affirmative action programs at the University of Michigan.
''The Republicans have been nothing but hostile,” McAuliffe says. “I don’t know where to stop on these issues.”
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