Chicago mayoral candidate Carol Moseley Braun

Chicago mayoral candidate Carol Moseley Braun

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There’s less than two weeks until the 2011 Chicago municipal election. Earlier this week, Eight Forty-Eight kicked off its mayoral candidate conversations with Miguel del Valle. Over the next week, host Alison Cuddy will talk with Patricia Van Pelt Watkins, William Doc Walls, Rahm Emanuel and Gery Chico. On Thurday it was Carol Moseley Braun’s turn.

Braun’s career is a series of firsts: Early on, she became the first African-American elected Assistant Majority Leader in the Illinois House of Representatives, she was also the first black woman to hold an executive post in Cook County government. And in 1993 she broke barriers as the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate. Braun went so far she wound up on the other side of the world when President Clinton appointed her U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand. The title stuck when she launched a line of organic food products called Ambassador Organics.

Carol Moseley Braun is a third-generation Chicagoan; she said increasing transparency is one of her top priorities for creating a City Hall for hall.

Music Button: Todd DelGuidice, “Mint Tea”, from the CD Pencil Sketches, (Origin)