Carol Moseley Braun

Carol Elizabeth Moseley Braun, also sometimes Moseley-Braun (born August 16, 1947), is an American diplomat, politician, and lawyer who represented Illinois in the United States Senate from 1993 to 1999. She is the first female African-American U.S. Senator in history, the first African-American U.S. Senator from the Democratic Party, the first woman to defeat an incumbent U.S. Senator in an election, and the first female U.S. Senator from Illinois. Moseley Braun was the only female U.S. Senator from Illinois in history until Tammy Duckworth became a U.S. Senator in January 2017.Prior to her Senate tenure, Moseley Braun was a member of the Illinois House of Representatives from 1979 to 1988 and served as recorder of deeds of Cook County from 1988 to 1992. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992 after defeating Senator Alan Dixon in a Democratic primary. Moseley Braun served one term in the Senate and was defeated by Republican Peter Fitzgerald in 1998.Following her Senate tenure, Moseley Braun served as the United States Ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa from 1999 to 2001. She was a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 U.S. presidential election; she withdrew from the race prior to the Iowa caucuses. In November 2010, following an announcement by Richard M. Daley that he would not seek re-election, Moseley Braun began a campaign for Mayor of Chicago. She placed placed fourth in a field of six candidates, losing the February 2011 election to Rahm Emanuel.

Bio from Wikipedia - See more on en.wikipedia.org Text under CC-BY-SA license