Donna Brazile

Donna Brazile

Donna Lease Brazile is an American political strategist, campaign manager and political analyst. Brazile was the first African American woman to direct a major presidential campaign, acting as campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000. She served as the acting chair of the Democratic National Committee in spring 2011, and again from July 2016 to February 2017. She is currently a Fox News contributor, and was previously a CNN contributor until her resignation in October 2016.

About Donna Brazile in brief

Summary Donna BrazileDonna Lease Brazile is an American political strategist, campaign manager and political analyst. Brazile was the first African American woman to direct a major presidential campaign, acting as campaign manager for Al Gore in 2000. She served as the acting chair of the Democratic National Committee in spring 2011, and again from July 2016 to February 2017. She is currently a Fox News contributor, and was previously a CNN contributor until her resignation in October 2016, after leaking CNN’s debate questions to Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. She has worked on several presidential campaigns for Democratic candidates, including Jesse Jackson and Walter Mondale–Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, and for Dick Gephardt in the 1988 Democratic primary. She donated her papers to the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections in the Louisiana State University Libraries Special Collections, located in Hill Memorial Library. In the 2008 election, she served as a superdelegate for her work for Bill Clinton and Al Gore. In an interview with political satirist Stephen Colbert, Brazile stated: ‘Look, a woman, I’m black; I like Hillary; I’m also grumpy John McCain. But I’m a Democrat so I like Obama, so I’m not going to say who I’m going to vote for.’ She is the daughter of Jean Marie and Lionel Joseph Brazile, the third of nine children. Her family’s surname was ‘Braswell’ several generations back. She became interested in politics at the age of nine when a local candidate for office promised to build a neighborhood playground.

She volunteered for the Jimmy Carter–Walter Mondale presidential campaign of 1976 as a teenager and for their 1980 presidential campaign while a student at LSU. She was a fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. After the Hurricane Katrina disaster, she was appointed as a member of the board of directors of the Louisiana Recovery Authority by Kathleen Blanco from 2005 to 2009. She also 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. In 1999, Braziles was appointed deputy campaign manager. She later promoted to campaign manager of the 2000 presidential campaign and was reportedly instrumental in the successful campaign to make Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a federal holiday. 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. In 1988, Brazle served as deputy field director of the Michael Dukakis general election campaign. In 1992, she worked for the Bill Clinton campaign for the presidency in 1992 and for re-election in 1996. In 2000, she became the firstAfrican-American woman to manage a major party presidential campaign. She consistently refrained from declaring her preferred Democratic presidential candidate, saying: ‘My momma taught me to play by the rules and respect those rules and those rules’