Braun to run for Chicago mayor

CHICAGO, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- Former Illinois U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun, a Democrat, announced Monday she will run for mayor of Chicago.

Braun said she will kick off the race with a petition drive that challenges people to register to vote. The announcement followed surprise word from Chicago Mayor Richard Daley earlier this month he would not seek an unprecedented seventh term.

"I've got the credentials to do this," Braun told a news conference.

A spokesman for Braun said the former senator is committee to a "nice" campaign, WMAQ-TV, Chicago, reported.

Braun, 63, who has been selling organic tea, represented Illinois in the U.S. Senate from 1993 to 1999 -- the first black woman elected to the upper chamber and the first woman to defeat an incumbent.

Braun started her career as a federal prosecutor in 1973 and was first elected to the Illinois General Assembly in 1978 where she rose to assistant majority leader, pushing government reform and civil rights. She was elected Cook County recorder of deeds in 1987. In 1992 she challenged former Sen. Alan Dixon in the Illinois Democratic primary and defeated him largely in a backlash against his vote to confirm Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court.

During her tenure in the Senate, Braun ran into controversy over campaign contributions, her handling of her mother's finances once she was put in a nursing home and a trip to Nigeria to visit strongman Sani Abacha.

Other possible contenders in the February at-large election -- the first in Chicago history -- are Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill.; his brother, Jonathan; White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel; Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart; the Rev. James T. Meeks, a Democratic state senator from Chicago; and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill.

If no candidate receives a majority, a runoff election will be scheduled for April.