CNBC Capital Report Transcript

GLORIA BORGER, co-host:

And welcome back to CAPITAL REPORT.

'Show me the money.' That's turning out to be a campaign mantra for the nine Democratic presidential candidates because the real test of survival may end up being how much campaign cash each one of them can raise. Joining us now is Democratic presidential contender Carol Moseley-Braun.

Thanks so much for being with us on CAPITAL REPORT. Tonight is the reporting deadline—midnight tonight. You had raised a measly $72,000 as of June. What is it going to be for you tonight?

Former Senator CAROL MOSELEY-BRAUN (Democrat, Illinois; Democratic Presidential Candidate): Well, first off, it's not that serious. It really isn't. The campaign money matters, but at the end of the day, the only issue is how much—whether you can raise enough money to survive as a viable campaign to get to the point where people actually start to vote, because, you know, the votes still matter more than the money does in the final analysis. But you have to stay alive long enough to get there.

BORGER: Right.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Now my campaign, we're doing very well, I think. We raised the smallest amount of money for the first quarter. We were the newest and just getting started. I don't hold public office, I don't have an organization behind me, so we were starting from scratch. But we have increased our fund raising by 100 percent, and that's...

BORGER: So you're at $140,000? Is that...

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: $150,000.

BORGER: All right.

ALAN MURRAY, co-host:

$150,000 for the quarter.

BORGER: $150,000.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Right, right, right.

MURRAY: $150,000 for the quarter, so 250--quarter of a million total, compared to candidates who are...

BORGER: Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: ...(Unintelligible) that's—I'd have to do that.

BORGER: Is it a quarter of a million total?

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: No, I don't think so. I don't think we're that far yet. I don't think we've gotten that far; no.

MURRAY: Yeah.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: But we raised 100 percent more this quarter than we did the first quarter and we're going to raise 100 percent more in the next quarter than we did this one. So we're building. I'm happy with where we are.

MURRAY: But how can you compete against candidates who are bringing in $6 million, $7 million a quarter?

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Well, because I have. And here's the really interesting angle on that: I am beating some people in the polls—I'm beating in the polling—candidates who have 10 times the amount of money.

MURRAY: For instance?

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Well, I don't want to name names, but...

MURRAY: Oh, name names.

BORGER: Go ahead. Go ahead.

MURRAY: Come on. That's what you're here for.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: I don't want to name names.

BROWN: You're talking—are you...

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Seriously. No, one candidate...

MURRAY: Are you talking about John Edwards?

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: I am. OK. You said it.

MURRAY: Yeah.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: But no, he has $7 million to my $72,000 and I was beating him in all the polls, and this time we're going to continue to—we're moving up in the polls. We're doing very well. We've got really good strength in the polling. And while the money isn't there yet, I have every confidence it will be.

MURRAY: You indicated you were going to make a decision in September about whether to stay in this race or not. Tell us what you're thinking right now. Is it worth staying?

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Right now, I'm thinking absolutely, positively it's going to be a go.

MURRAY: Really?

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Yeah.

MURRAY: Really?

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Well, this is an exploratory committee...

MURRAY: OK.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: ...and maybe I should have just started—because this campaign season got started so fast, everybody kind of jumped the gun on it.

MURRAY: Yeah.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Normally they don't get started till after September, but everybody started running the minute Al Gore announced he was not going to be a candidate. And so I started off in an exploratory committee. I said from the very beginning that I would announce in September whether I was going to be a candidate for president of the United States. And right this moment it's very likely that—I mean, I know that's what's going to happen. I mean, we feel really good about this campaign...

MURRAY: So you're going to stay in.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Yeah. The responses have been very positive. The people have been excited by my candidacy. And on every front we're doing very well.

BORGER: You said—and I'm going to quote you here—"My qualifications to be president of the United States are on a par with any of the candidates in this race."

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: That's right.

BORGER: Howard Dean has been a governor, Dick Gephardt has been the leader of his party. You were a senator who was defeated for re-election. Why would you say—Joe Lieberman has run for the vice presidency.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: You don't know my whole resume, do you?

BORGER: I know a lot of your resume.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Let me open it up for you—as they say, drill down a little bit. I started out in the state Legislature. I was—well, I started off as an assistant United States attorney and then I went on to be a state representative for 10 years. I was an assistant majority leader for five of those 10 years. Then I moved on to be an executive in county government, two million people. Cook County has more people in it than some of the states represented by candidates in this race. Then from there on to the United States Senate. I was outspent 3-to-1, narrowly defeated, went on to become...

BORGER: In a very controversial campaign, I might add, in which questions were raised about your mother's Medicaid money and reimbursements had to be made.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Gloria, I know you...

BORGER: And you're traveling to Nigeria...

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: And I know you know that all of that came to nothing. I couldn't do this if I had baggage at all. And none of that was—all of that was positively, affirmatively disproved, and I received the highest security clearances when I became—you cut me off before I got to this part—I got a 98-to-2 vote of confirmation from the Senate as ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, and got the highest security clearances. So as my brother says, 'Baggage? We don't have no stinking baggage.' OK? So we don't. We don't. I mean, I'm real clear about this, which makes me the only candidate in this race that has international experience.

MURRAY: But tell us this: If it's not about money—because if it is about money, you're in trouble. If it's not about money, what is the one issue that is really going to matter to the American people come November 2004 that you think is going to make them go in your direction?

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: I think that the main thing that I bring to this race is the ability to say to the people that we don't have to be hostages to fear, that we can regain our confidence as Americans and rebuild this economy, rebuild this country, restore our civil and human rights, get back our right to privacy, get back to the kind of balance and sense of security in this country that we have not seen with this administration.

I mean, this crowd has pandered to fear at every turn, and we're living behind barriers and berms. We have to take our shoes off to get on an airplane. And that kind of pandering to fear has been a smoke screen for an extreme radical right-wing agenda, in my opinion and, I think, in the opinion of a lot of Americans. People don't want to see the courts packed with right-wing ideologues. They don't want their librarians having to turn them in for taking the wrong books out of the library. They want to have a sense of balance and normalcy in which the economy works for everybody.

And as you know, right now, record deficits. Record deficits, we have misspent money, the whole misadventure in Iraq. I mean, there's a lot of things going on that I think the American people are not happy with, and I think they're going to be ready for a change.

BORGER: Carol Moseley-Braun, Democratic presidential candidate who say she's going to stay in the race, thanks very much for being with us.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Absolutely. Oh, that was short.

MURRAY: And we hope to...

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: I'll have to come back.

MURRAY: If you stay in the race, we want to have you back.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Will do.

MURRAY: So thanks very much.

BORGER: Thank you. Thank you.

Ms. MOSELEY-BRAUN: Thanks, Gloria.