Donna Brazile life and biography

Donna Brazile aka Donna Lease Brazile is an American author, professor, and political analyst affiliated with the Democratic Party. She was the first African American to direct a major presidential campaign, for Al Gore in 2000. Brazile briefly served as interim Chair of the Democratic National Committee in the spring of 2011.

Brazile has worked on several presidential campaigns for Democratic candidates, including Jimmy Carter–Walter Mondale in 1976 and 1980, Jesse Jackson in 1984, Walter Mondale–Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and for Richard Gephardt in the 1988 Democratic primary.

After Gephardt lost the primary in 1988, Brazile served as deputy field director of the Michael Dukakis general election campaign. On October 20, 1988, she made headlines by telling a group of reporters that George H.W. Bush needed to "'fess up" about unsubstantiated rumors of an extramarital affair.

Said Brazile, "The American people have every right to know if Barbara Bush will share that bed with him in the White House." The Dukakis campaign immediately disavowed her remarks and Dukasis fired her from his campaign staff shortly after the story broke. Four years later, the same issue, the relationship of George H.W. Bush and Jennifer Fitzgerald would be briefly rehashed during the 1992 campaign against Bill Clinton, who had his own extramarital affair rumors.

In the 1990s, Brazile served as Chief of Staff and Press Secretary to Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia, where she helped guide the District's budget and local legislation on Capitol Hill. She also served as an advisor for Bill Clinton's campaign for the presidency in 1992 and for re-election in 1996.

In 1999, Brazile was appointed deputy campaign manager and was later promoted to campaign manager of the 2000 presidential campaign of Vice-President Al Gore, becoming the first African-American woman to manage a presidential campaign. She was responsible for many of the campaigns questionable choices, including not letting Clinton campaign for Gore, running away from the Clinton record on domestic policy and using "orange" make up in the first debate with George W. Bush.

After the post-election fight over votes in the 2000 United States presidential election in Florida, Brazile was appointed Chair of the Democratic National Committee's Voting Rights Institute. In the 2008 election, she served as a superdelegate for her work for Bill Clinton.

As a delegate for the Democratic National Convention, Brazile consistently refrained from declaring her preferred Democratic presidential candidate. In an interview with political satirist Stephen Colbert, Brazile stated, "Look, I'm a woman, so I like Hillary. I'm black; I like Obama. But I'm also grumpy, so I like John McCain."

She serves as interim Chair of the Democratic National Committee, bridging the gap between outgoing Chair Tim Kaine, who is leaving to run for Senate in Virginia, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who cannot ascend to the post until at least fifteen days after being nominated on April 5, 2011.

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