Black Feminist Politics from Kennedy to Trump

by Duchess Harris

  After Moseley Braun’s speech, Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) offered a motion to allow the Senate to reconsider Helms’s amendment. Moseley Braun returned to the floor, saying, “This is no small matter,” that a flag symbolizing slavery should not be “underwritten, underscored, adopted by this United States Senate.”21 A number of other senators then went to the floor and sided with Moseley Braun . In the second vote, Helms’s amendment was killed, 75 to 25. In a Senate where positions are almost never influenced by floor speeches, Moseley Braun’s oratory had swayed 27 senators to change their votes. The next day, in an editorial, The New York Times praised Moseley Braun’s actions:On Thursday, Carol Moseley Braun woke up a sleepy Senate to the unthinking way the White majority can offend minority Americans…. Senator Jesse Helms studiously missed her point when he said, “Race shouldn’t have been introduced” into the floor debate. Once the full Senate realized that race was already implicated in the symbolism of the Civil War emblem, the affront to Black Americans was clear. Using the time-honored threat of the filibuster, Senator Moseley Braun claimed full membership in the Senate club. Several weeks ago she had used conventional techniques to bury the measure in the Judiciary committee. Only after Senators Helms and Strom Thurmond broke the norms of courtesy and tried to sneak the amendment past the entire Senate did she resort to high drama…. On the Senate floor, she matched reason to passion, with splendid results.22

  Moseley Braun’s “majestic moment”23 was important, but it was also fleeting. Later that summer, Moseley Braun’s campaign debt again became an issue when she missed a filing deadline for federal disclosure forms and instead released a summary showing that her campaign debt had climbed to over $600,000. An August 13 Chicago Sun Times article mentioned Moseley Braun’s debt and reviewed what she had achieved over halfway into her first year in office:“The debt is very upsetting to me,” she said. She said the bills eventually would be settled…. The senator said that amongst her biggest accomplishments so far were helping to expand flood-relief coverage for Illinois victims and having a hand in killing a tax on commodities trades. She said she was “most proud” of not having missed a single vote.

  Two weeks later, the Federal Election Commission announced its plan to conduct an exhaustive investigation into Moseley Braun’s finances and reported that she continued to pay Matthews as a fund-raising consultant, raising the question, “Is paying Matthews a form of subsidizing her own lifestyle?”

  As Moseley Braun settled into her job as a senator, the country’s political climate began to shift dramatically. Republicans successfully portrayed President Bill Clinton’s proposal for government-provided universal healthcare coverage as a liberal attempt to make government bigger. The failure of the Clinton healthcare plan was the basis on which House minority leader Newt Gingrich (R-GA) led the Republicans in their reactionary 1994 campaign, centered around a platform called “The Contract with America ,” which proposed reducing the size of the national government and returning power to states. The way in which women candidates were perceived had also changed in 1992. According to an October 2, 1994, New York Times article, women were having a much tougher time campaigning than they had two years earlier. The article said that Moseley Braun and other women “rode the sex card to the United States Senate in 1992”24 but since they “left a complicated legacy for those running this year, many agree that being a woman is not the advantage it was two years ago and may even be a handicap.”25 The article continued:Since the raw anger over the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas…has subsided, many female candidates say they do not think it helps to emphasize their sex. In a turnabout from two years ago, it is the men who now see the benefit of playing up the sex of their female opponents. Crime rather than the economy has become the central issue in many races, leaving women to suffer from a stereotype that they are not as tough as men on crime.26

  The November election was dubbed “the Republican Revolution ” after the Republicans won by a landslide, capturing control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the 1950s and shifting what was considered the political center significantly to the right. In 1995, the Republican leadership began trying to implement many of the points of their Contract with America . President Clinton , fearing his reelection prospects were in jeopardy, was initially reluctant to take on the Republicans, who seemed to have a strong electoral mandate for their proposals. The Democratic leadership in the Senate was, in many cases, also unwilling to risk angering voters by strongly opposing Republican plans. However, a few of the Senate’s more liberal members, including Moseley Braun, held steadfast to their beliefs and actively fought the Republicans. One example of opposition came in July, when Moseley Braun and Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) were the only two senators to oppose a bill that would have cut $16.4 billion in spending previously approved by the Senate.Parting company with President Clinton and other Party elders, Sens. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota and Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois prevented a final vote on the bill to cut $16.4 billion from previously enacted spending while funding aid to victims of the California earthquake and other disasters. “The people of my state would not want to see me just lay down on this railroad track and get run over without saying anything,” said Moseley Braun . She and Wellstone objected to cuts in job training, heating assistance for the poor, and other domestic programs.

  Making a formal alliance with Wellstone, considered one of the most progressive legislators to vote on the Senate floor, worked against Moseley Braun almost as much as her controversial trip to Nigeria the following summer. During that 1996 trip, Moseley Braun visited with the Nigerian dictator, Sani Abacha . She had not consulted with the State Department before the trip, nor had she informed most of her staff about where she was going. Moseley Braun’s visit to Nigeria provoked widespread criticism and led to the resignation of her chief of staff, who was upset about not having been informed of Moseley Braun’s plans. The trip to Nigeria and Moseley Braun’s interaction with Abacha again raised questions about whose interests she represented. The lead of a Boston Globe editorial placed her trip in the context of her race and gender: “Carol Moseley Braun has made some missteps since becoming the first Black woman elected to the US Senate in 1992. But none of her previous errors has been as damaging to the national interest as her recent visit with the dictator of Nigeria, Sani Abacha .” The article continued:Moseley-Braun has described her sojourn variously as a “vacation,” a bid to offer condolences to the Abachas after a recent death in their family, and a legitimate fact-finding voyage (though she spoke with none of the many prosecuted Nigerian democracy advocates). The most disturbing possibility is that she had no concrete rationale at all. She just went…. Besides Louis Farrakhan , Moseley Braun is the most prominent apologist for Nigeria in America. Why she has spoken in the Senate against sanctions for the biggest subjugator of Black people in the world (Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation) is a mystery. We only hope that it has nothing to do with the fact that her former fiancé, who accompanied her on this visit, was once a registered lobbyist for the Nigerian government in Washington.

  The Globe’s comparison of Senator Moseley Braun to Minister Louis Farrakhan evoked ideas of separatism and otherness within the USA. Although the Senator had numerous episodes of questionable judgment, her mistakes and subsequent support were attributed to race as opposed to any other reason, including lack of federal legislative experience. One statement representative of this approach to analyzing Moseley Braun’s time in office was articulated in a New York Times article written by longtime Moseley Braun watcher, Richard L. Berke , who wrote:The turnabout among Democrats reflects the sensitive politics of race rather than the accomplishments of Ms. Moseley Braun. Many Democrats said they would be wary of the backlash if they took her on, particularly since this state has no other highly visible Black politicians. Several Democrats also said they had no appetite to reopen the racial tensions of a decade ago, when a Black mayor, Harold Washington, was elected
in Chicago over two White challengers and the politics of race upended the city’s once monolithic Democratic machine. Some said they were acting out of self-interest; if Black voters were alienated, they might not turn out for other Democratic candidates.27

  It wasn’t until the third-to-last paragraph of the almost 2000-word article that Moseley Braun’s accomplishments as a senator were mentioned, and briefly at that. The article stated that she had a liberal voting record and had been an “eloquent” advocate for minorities and women, pointing specifically to her 1993 speech against renewing the Daughters of the Confederacy patent. Berke also mentioned that, “as she vowed in her campaign,” Moseley Braun had spent a significant amount of time working on education issues and had focused on improving the “nation’s crumbling schools.”28 The Times article concluded by quoting Loyola political science professor John P. Pelissero as saying Moseley Braun’s biggest challenge was that she was known for “all these character issues.”29 Ironically, this article and the others like it that had focused on Moseley Braun’s character rather than her legislative record not only identified the political challenge facing her, but also perpetuated it by keeping the public’s attention focused on her character.

  In addition to those problems mentioned already, a high turnover rate among Moseley Braun’s Senate staff had contributed to a widespread public perception that she was not doing a good job. In a four-year span, her office had hired and then lost four chiefs of staff and four press secretaries, perhaps the two most important positions in any Senate office. Polls showed that prospective voters viewed Moseley Braun as dishonest and unethical. At the advice of her new political consultant, Moseley Braun began to address questions about her character more concretely. For most of her term, she had maintained that the concerns others had expressed about her were blown out of proportion, should be off-limits because they related to her private life, and were irrelevant to her senatorial duties. Her new response to ethical questioning was that the criticism of her resulted from “public relations disasters” which would have been of far less significance had she handled them in a “more sophisticated way.” Moseley Braun seemed to be alluding—though she never overtly expressed as much—that she lacked mentoring and role models from other legislators with more experience. There were not, in fact, any role models for Moseley Braun , and it seems that no one took her under their wing to prompt her as to Senate protocol, whether formal or informal.

  Given the lack of support, Moseley Braun relied upon the defense that her missteps had been exaggerated by the media, which exploited her political naiveté. She insisted that her trip to Nigeria wouldn’t have been nearly as much of an issue if she had only the presence of mind to hold a press conference beforehand to announce she was going. Her trip, she said, was not very different from many taken by other senators. “Understand, colleagues go to China and meet with Chinese officials. That country has an absolutely abominable human rights record. So I ask the question, what’s the difference?” Rather than dwelling on the negatives, as the press had for much of her time in the Senate, Moseley Braun’s strategy was to focus on her achievements and to talk about these more effectively. She was candid about her lack of experience, reflecting:I started off thinking I had to be a good legislator and the rest would take care of itself, and that’s just not the case…. The rest does not just take care of itself any more than being a good legislator doesn’t just take care of itself. You have to invest energy, you have to invest thought, you have to be invested in the portrayal and the symbolism around what you do as much as the substance.

  With the goal of distracting voters from the ethical questions by giving them something positive to think about instead, Moseley Braun formulated a campaign script that included fighting against automated teller machine surcharges, working to attract more federal funds to fix deteriorating school buildings, pointing out her role in bringing community policing and 3000 new police officers to Illinois, and taking some credit for the country’s economic turnaround because of her votes to cut taxes and balance the budget. Moseley Braun sought to draw attention to her record, which included expanding minority ownership of television stations and fighting cuts to social programs of the poor. She had also taken moderate stances on certain issues, championing Illinois business interests and voting in favor of the constitutional amendment to require a balanced federal budget. Moseley Braun finally began to address significant fund-raising issues facing her campaign. It had taken her years to eliminate debt remaining from her 1992 campaign, and though she raised $1.1 million over the summer of 1997, she was well behind her targets and needed to raise more in order to run television ads to promote herself and answer charges raised by her opponents. Her need to raise funds increased when it became clear that she was one of three female Democratic senators up for reelection who were key targets of the national Republican Party.

  The March 17th Republican primary was, of course, of interest to Moseley Braun as it determined her November opponent, conservative Peter Fitzgerald , a 37-year-old multimillionaire from a wealthy banking family. His opponent, Loleta Didrickson , had the support of most Republican Party insiders because they thought Fitzgerald—who opposed abortion in all cases, supported legalizing concealed weapons, and was against gay rights—was too conservative to be a viable candidate in the general election. Republican leaders, including 1996 presidential nominee Bob Dole , came to the state to campaign for Didrickson . Ultimately though, Fitzgerald won the primary by spending $7 million of his own money on a television campaign and attracting the support of religious conservatives. Moseley Braun’s campaign was happy to hear the primary results, as they seemed to have improved her own reelection prospects. “As Bob Dole says,” Moseley Braun said, referring to Dole’s arguments against Fitzgerald and on behalf of Didrickson , “it’s a difference between the mainstream and the extreme.”30

  By May however, it became clear that Fitzgerald’s victory hadn’t solved all of Moseley Braun’s problems. Fitzgerald’s personal wealth, estimated at $40 million, would prove a significant asset to his campaign, especially since Moseley Braun’s campaign was still having trouble raising money. President Clinton, Vice President Al Gore , and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who would eventually wage her own successful Senate campaign in New York, all came to Illinois to campaign on Moseley Braun’s behalf and to help her raise funds. By the end of the summer, Moseley Braun’s campaign had $1 million on hand and more money was coming in, but she had still been unable to effectively defend against Fitzgerald’s steady barrage of negative advertising. An August Chicago Tribune poll showed Moseley Braun trailing Fitzgerald 46 to 39% with a four-point margin of error. An early September poll by the St. Louis-Dispatch showed Fitzgerald leading by 11 points, 46 to 35%, also with a four-point margin of error.

  At a Labor Day event, Moseley Braun found herself once again attracting negative press coverage after she got angry and lost her composure, charging racism in response to an article by syndicated columnist George F. Will , who criticized her personal and political conduct. “I think because he could not say ‘nigger,’ he said the word ‘corrupt,’” Moseley Braun said,31 though Will had not actually used the word “corrupt” in his article. “George Will can just take his hood and go back to wherever he came from,” she added.32 Shortly after the outburst, Moseley Braun apologized publicly and faxed an apology to Will, but it was too late to keep the media from giving wide coverage to the episode.

  As the election neared and it became clear that Fitzgerald had a significant chance to oust Moseley Braun from office, the campaign turned ugly. According to an October 8 article in The New York Times, “with less than a month to go, the candidates have dropped all pretense of keeping the gloves on.”33 Moseley Braun referred to Fitzgerald as “duplicitous,” a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” and a candidate who resorts to “scuzzball” campaign tactics.34 Fitzgerald called her “shrill,” said Moseley Braun had “nothing positive to say about her own record,” and com
plained that her career had been “obscured by numerous scandals and controversies.”35 Polling continued to show a roughly 10 point percentage gap in Fitzgerald’s favor and indicated that voters believed he was the more honest and trustworthy candidate. The day before the election, Moseley Braun continued campaigning vigorously. “Most polls over the last few months have shown Ms. Moseley Braun trailing badly,” wrote The New York Times.36 Even at this late juncture in the campaign, though, analysts still believed Moseley Braun might be able to eke out reelection, given that “Ms. Moseley Braun… appeared frequently… with notable campaigners like Hillary Rodham Clinton and running an aggressive series of advertisements, [and] three polls published in the last few days show her gaining ground and, in one case, running even with Mr. Fitzgerald .”37