(WOMENSENEWS)–This week the New York Times described the National Organization for Women’s endorsement of Carol Moseley Braun for president as “silly.”
In an editorial that ran on September 14, the Times said that NOW’s decision to endorse the former senator and ambassador is a “peculiar way to enhance the clout of women in politics.”
The paper agrees that Braun has a “strong record on women’s rights issues” and yet calls her presidential bid a “vanity affair” based on a personal quest to return to the limelight.
The Times concluded that NOW’s endorsement “trivialized the important role women will play in the coming election” and makes the organization “look silly to boot.”
Moseley Braun has 25-plus years experience as an elected official at the local, state and national levels. She is a lawyer who was elected to the Illinois state legislature and also elected to countywide office in Cook County, Ill. She is the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate and only the second African American senator since the Civil War and Reconstruction. She recently completed service as the U.S. ambassador to New Zealand.
Moseley Braun is also the first African American woman to run for president since Shirley Chisholm in 1972.
