Carol Moseley Braun Hires Patricia Ireland to Manage Campaign

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Nov 17, 2003   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Carol Moseley Braun Hires Patricia Ireland to Manage Campaign

by Paul Nowak
LifeNews.com Staff Writer
November 17, 2003

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Ex-Senator Carol Moseley Braun, though her campaign has been plagued with setbacks, has hired Patricia Ireland, former president of NOW to run her long-shot bid for the Democratic nomination.

Ireland, who was dismissed last month after six months as chief executive of the YWCA because of her pro-abortion view (though the organization also supports abortion), will serve as Moseley-Braun’s campaign manager.

For ten years Ireland served as president of the National Organization of Women, which has endorsed Moseley-Braun along with the pro-abortion National Women’s Political Caucus.

Ireland inherits a number of problems for the lone woman in the race for the Democratic nomination.

According to Paula Xanthopoulou, manager of the campaign’s Chicago operations, two key advisers left last Friday – Kevin Lampe and Kitty Kurth – and campaign treasurer Billie Paige planned to quit Monday.

Braun has also been largely out-of-sight, appearing at Democratic debates and forums, but seldom elsewhere.

The campaign is rumored to be thousands of dollars in debt, although Xanthopoulou would only comment, "Clearly, we need to raise more money.”

Braun has only collected $342,519 as of Sept. 30, and has only $29,278 cash on hand.

Braun, the only woman among the nine pro-abortion Democratic nominee hopefuls, received endorsements from pro-abortion groups NOW and the National Women’s Political Caucus.

But even those endorsements drew jeers. The New York Times discredited endorsements of Braun’s campaign in an editorial earlier this year, calling them "silly," and stating that they "trivialized the important role women will play in the coming election."

"Carol Moseley-Braun’s position on abortion is the same as the other nine candidates in the race," Carol Tobias, PAC Director of National Right to Life, told LifeNews.com. "She’s not adding anything new on that front. Braun was endorsed by NOW and NWPC because she is a strongly pro-abortion woman, but the entire Democratic field is strongly pro-abortion."

According to National Right to Life, Braun only voted pro-life 7% of the time during her term as a U.S. Senator from Illinois.

Braun made political headlines in 1992 when she became the first black female Senator. After she lost the seat in 1998, President Clinton appointed her US ambassador to New Zealand.

So far in the race for Democratic nomination for the 2004 Presidential Election, Braun has placed in the back of the polls drawing only single digits in Iowa and New Hampshire.