Carol Moseley Braun
Carol Moseley Braun
Carol Elizabeth Moseley Braun, also sometimes Moseley-Braun, is an American politician and lawyer who represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 1993 to 1999. She was the first and to date only female African-American Senator, the first African-American U.S. Senator for the Democratic Party, the first woman to defeat an incumbent U.S. Senator in an election, and the first and to date only female Senator from Illinois. From 1999 until 2001, she was the United States Ambassador to New...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth16 August 1947
CountryUnited States of America
I think that we have a responsibility to make certain that we are fiscally responsible in order to assure, frankly, future generations don't have to pay our bills.
I think it does suggest that the American people really do want to listen to somebody who actually has some solutions, some answers, and gives them some hope.
I really think that's the key, part of the spiritual renewal that America needs to have, the notion that we really can have confidence in a better tomorrow.
I think its time to get a reapportionment process that frankly takes out the incumbency protection and the raw politics of the process.
I think Americans want to believe in this country again.
And frankly, being a woman I think gives me a slightly different take on a lot of the issues and on a lot of the solutions to the problems we face.
I think the legacy of the civil rights movement is that now whites are more open to being represented by people of color or people who are women or, again, non-traditional candidates.
I'd come back after having served as ambassador to New Zealand and found that I had real concerns about the direction in which this country was headed.
So I think that if we want to have a Congress, if we want to have government that looks like America, if we want to have government that is truly a representative Democracy, then we need to clearly address how we get our campaign laws out of the way of Democracy.
The notion that we won the war against Iraq is like saying we won a war against Arizona. I mean, the fact of the matter is it's not that big of a country. Nobody, I don't think, had any notion that we would do anything but win it.
I'm a results-oriented person and my Senate record shows that.
I want people who believe in my message and where I am on issues to support me.
The reason that minorities and women don't have a better shot at getting elected to the Senate or to statewide office is because the campaign finance rules are so skewed as to make it very difficult for non-traditional candidates to raise the money necessary to get elected.
The fact is that the diversity in this political class serves the same interest as diversity in any arena, which is it stirs the competitive pot.