So we were wrong. Apparently Carol
Moseley-Braun couldn’t hear the laughter and has decided
she will at the least dip her toe into the candidacy pool for the
Democratic presidential nomination.
Moseley-Braun, as we reported
late last week, was thought to have decided to nix the presidential
run, and instead was planning to announce on Friday that she would
seek to regain the Illinois Senate seat she lost six years ago to
Republican Peter Fitzgerald.
But that’s not what happened. She’s not going to run for the
Senate. But she is going ahead with a possible presidential
try.
According to several Democratic National Committee sources, her
decision was partially forced upon her. In conversations with DNC
chief Terry McAuliffe and friends still holding
Senate seats on Capitol Hill, Moseley-Braun was told that there
wasn’t much enthusiasm for her to run again for the Senate. “The
Democratic campaign committee up on the Hill and the DNC have
already been looking into a candidate to challenge Fitzgerald. It’s
one of the few campaigns we think we’re in a good position to win,”
says a DNC source.
Almost all of the potential Senate candidates, at least those on
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman Jon
Corzine’s list, are independently wealthy Illinoisans who
wouldn’t require a huge chunk of change from his DSCC or the DNC.
Moseley-Braun would need it from both.
But, according to the DNC staffer, when Moseley-Braun raised the
possibility of running for president, McAuliffe didn’t laugh, at
least out loud. In fact, McAuliffe has tentatively blocked out
space for the former senator to speak at next month’s national
party conference in Washington, D.C.
At this stage of the game, a presidential exploratory committee
wouldn’t cost Moseley-Braun much cash, and it wouldn’t serve to
scare off potential primary challengers in the Senate race, as her
presence there most certainly would have done.
Perhaps even more surprising than Moseley-Braun’s decision is
the person who at least for now appears to be advising her:
longtime Clinton and Gore political hatchetlady Donna
Brazile. Of late, she has been working on a memoir, as
well as advising the Democratic Party on minority outreach issues.
She was highly visible during Sen. Mary Landrieu’s
runoff election in Louisiana last month.
“I don’t think Carol can afford Brazile for long,” says another
DNC staffer. “Brazile could make a lot more working for another
candidate, but perhaps she sees Moseley-Braun as a vehicle to
achieve something that a Kerry or Gephardt wouldn’t be able to do
for her.”
Supporters of Moseley-Braun crow that their girl’s run would be
historic. But only inasmuch as she’d be the first failed
African-American Senator running for president. Rep.
Shirley Chisolm made true history by being the
first African-American woman to run for president decades
ago.
