President Clinton joined Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, D-Ill, for a Chicago fund-raiser for her campaign. (AP)

By Jon Jeter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 17, 1998; Page A10

CHICAGO, Oct. 16—President Clinton's fund-raising appearance here today provided Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun's cash-strapped campaign with an emergency transfusion, as the Illinois Democrat struggles to overcome a double-digit deficit in the polls by Election Day.

Clinton appeared at a $2,500-a-plate lunch that the White House said would raise $500,000 for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which plans to use most of the money to keep the GOP from drumming Moseley-Braun out of office. She is widely regarded as the most vulnerable Democrat in the Senate.

The president tried to highlight Moseley-Braun's record and tied her reelection bid to his popularity. "Do you believe that if her opponent had been in the Senate, he would've voted for the Brady bill?" Clinton asked, referring to the gun control legislation cosponsored by Moseley-Braun and passed by Congress.

At a White House ceremony earlier with Democrats to celebrate the budget deal, Clinton chided Republicans for their resistance to passing a school modernization plan Moseley-Braun had pushed for and promised to back it again next year. He said he was flying to Chicago "to stand with" Moseley-Braun.

"I think it is worth pointing out today, she was the very first member of the [Democratic] caucus who stood up for the idea that the national government had an opportunity to do something to promote the building and repair of school facilities for our children's future," Clinton said.

The first black woman elected to the Senate, Moseley-Braun has been badly outspent by her Republican opponent, Peter Fitzgerald, a relatively unknown state senator who has tapped into his family's banking fortune to finance his campaign. The latest financial disclosure reports showed she had $391,000 left in her campaign fund at the end of September. That is less than Fitzgerald said he spends per week on television ads alone in his bid to oust the first-term senator. So far, he has spent nearly $9 million on his race.

The theme of Fitzgerald's ad campaign has been recurring questions about Moseley-Braun's ethics. Since her 1992 election, she has been dogged by allegations that she and her former campaign manager spent campaign funds on clothes and jewelry and that she mishandled an inheritance from her mother, ahd has been criticized for traveling to Nigeria to meet with that country's brutal dictator, the late Sani Abacha.

In a TV ad this week, Moseley-Braun apologized for "mistakes made," and urged voters to reelect her. But even as the ads began to hit the air, allegations surfaced that the senator's sister was using her Senate office in Illinois to raise funds for Moseley-Braun's campaign. Moseley-Braun said her sister was unaware that it was illegal to solicit funds from the senator's government office.

Speaking at the fund-raiser today, Moseley-Braun portrayed Fitzgerald -- an abortion opponent and gun advocate -- as a "right-wing extremist," continuing her effort to define the Republican as out of touch with mainstream voters.

Fitzgerald has outpaced Moseley-Braun despite running what some pollsters describe as a "stealth campaign." He does not speak in any of his television ads and has made Moseley-Braun the focus of his campaign, rather than his own political views. While the incumbent has challenged Fitzgerald to nearly a dozen debates, he has agreed to only one, and polls repeatedly show that despite his lead voters know little about him.

In a poll released Thursday by Copley newspapers, Moseley-Braun trailed Fitzgerald by 12 percentage points. Perhaps most striking, however, was that Moseley-Braun's support from women, who favored her 2 to 1 six years ago, had eroded. The poll revealed that Braun and Fitzgerald are statistically tied among female voters.

Hoping to shore up the senator's support among women voters, Hillary Rodham Clinton is scheduled to visit Chicago suburbs Saturday to campaign for Moseley-Braun, followed by a fund-raising appearance by the first lady next week. A 30-second TV commercial with Hillary Clinton appealing to voters for "the Carol Moseley-Braun I've seen in the Senate" also was going on the air today.

Several dozen protesters stood outside the Union Club of Chicago, carrying signs reading, "Impeach the Felon," "Fire the Liar" and "Feminist Soccer Mom for Impeachment," as the president dined inside with about 60 contributors.