From: mike@uunet!tellab5!odgate (Mike J. Kelly)
Subject: Re: The truth about Sen. Braun (was Re: PLUS: slander? Limbaugh?)
Organization: Odesta Corporation
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 19:45:04 GMT

ck347@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Richard A. Mulac) writes:

>  Following the November election, Braun took a monthlong vacation to
>  SOUTH AFRICA; flew there on a private jet and the Concorde ($$$); 
>  moved into a $3,300 a month penthouse apartment; bought a new Jeep
>  and expensive clothes;
>  AND DID ALL THIS WHILE HER CAMPAIGN WAS IN DEBT AND CAMPAIGN STAFF
>  HAD NOT BEEN PAID.

>  During her last days in office as Cook County Recorder of Deeds she
>  improperly hired 10 people as civil servants, some of whom had 
>  worked on her campaign.

>  While the main thrust of her campaign had been the fact that no
>  women sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, she has stated she
>  now has NO interest in becoming a member.

>This is what you get when you elect someone who runs soley on a demagogic
>platform.  What an embaressment to the 'year of the woman'.   {:^)

Ahhhhm, speaking as one who actually lives in Illinois, rather than just
reads about it or hears about it second-hand, I can tell you that the 
focus of Carol Braun's campaign was never the Judiciary committee.  The
press made that the focus.  Her focus in the primary was that the
incumbent, Sen. Alan Dixon was out of touch with the real interests of
the state, and that the Senate was an all-white, nearly all-male body that
clearly did not represent the interests of all Americans.  In the general
election, she ran against a ham-fisted millionaire attorney (who actually
bragged in a debate about paying $700,000 in *taxes* -- how many people do you
know who ever SEE $700,000 in their lives, let alone make enough to pay that
much in TAXES *in one year*?).  He was an even easier target than Dixon.

Carol Braun is getting used to the fact that U.S. Senators are a helluva
lot more in the media light than she was in her previous position as a
Cook County officeholder.  Cook County officials, after a year-long, 7-day-a-
week campaign, can take off for three weeks of vacation without being
pilloried in the press for it.  U.S. Senators apparently can't.  Cook County
officials can dismiss unsubstantiated, anonymous charges *which were fully
investigated by an independent attorney and found to be groundless* without
getting beat up for it as a representative of the "year of the women"
(whatever *that* is; who seriously believes that increasing the number of
women in the Senate to roughly 6% of the total membership is cause for
celebration?)

Carol Braun sold her house in a very nice part of Chicago, which she had
owned for quite a while and so probably made a nice profit on the sale, and
used some of the money to take a much-needed vacation and rent an apartment
more convenient to the downtown area  which is where she will often be when
she is in Chicago.

Candidates (unless they are millionaires or billionaires) do not pay off
campaign debt personally, nor are they personally responsible for it.  They
continue to raise money from their supporters and use that to pay off debt.
That system sucks, I agree, but if you want to change it, work to change
it, don't attack Carol Braun for playing by the same rules that every other
political candidate plays by.