CONDI VS. CAROL:

Moseley-Braun considers run for presidency (LYNN SWEET, January 15, 2003, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES)

Former ambassador and senator Carol Moseley-Braun is not only mulling a bid to reclaim her Senate seat--she is also considering a presidential run.

Moseley-Braun plans to make an announcement Friday regarding her political future. She has various avenues open to her.

The Illinois Democratic Senate primary is crowded with five other contenders. But if Moseley-Braun announces she will start raising money for a federal campaign--or is forming a political action committee--she can use the money to explore running for either office or to rejoin the political scene as a national player.

In the last months, Moseley-Braun, defeated for re-election by Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.) in 1998, has been looking at various political re-entry points, considering everything from City Hall to the White House.

She eventually ruled out a 2003 mayoral bid against Mayor Daley. In interviews, she has been saying she was leaving all her options open.

Moseley-Braun has been testing the waters in Illinois and in visits to Washington for a political comeback, convinced the Senate hearings preceding her confirmation as ambassador to New Zealand scrubbed her clean of the controversy that has dogged her regarding her 1992 campaign finances.

Beautiful: all of the Democrat senators who are running presumably voted to confirm her, so they can hardly criticize her ethics, can they? Meanwhile, even if she shouldn't win the nomination, as a black woman senator/ambassador from a large Midwestern state she's a nearly drawing-board vice presidential pick, unless someone can think of some other reasons she should be excluded from the ticket? Posted by Orrin Judd at January 15, 2003 2:11 PM