Rahm Emanuel Helping Carol Moseley Braun Pay Back Campaign Debt At Event

Two days after Congressional Democrats took a drubbing in the November 2010 elections, Chicago mayoral candidate Carol Moseley Braun issued a scathing press release targeted at her main opponent.

"On this day when President Obama and Illinois Democrats are still recovering from the painful political debacle that he was the architect of, Rahm Emanuel is off in Hollywood hanging out with bankers and billionaires," the release read. "But maybe Hollywood is where he belongs because the story of how he 'helped' the Obama administration when he was chief of staff is indeed fiction."

Moseley Braun had reason to gripe: the future mayor-elect would raise tens of millions of dollars during the campaign, while she would never drum up the funds to get an ad on TV. (Official numbers won't be made public until April 15.)

But in a show of largesse, Emanuel has now agreed to appear at a fundraiser for Braun to help her clear her leftover debt from the campaign.

An email sent Thursday night from the Braun camp, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, said that Emanuel will be a special guest at an April 21 event at Karyn's on Green in Greektown, where dinners will run from $500 to $1000 a plate. Emanuel aides confirmed the event, the Trib reports.

A former U.S. Senator, Braun finished fourth in the six-way race, with only 9 percent of the vote. Her poor performance, especially with the city's black voters, is widely seen as having helped Emanuel win the election outright by crossing the 50-percent threshold. Anything lower than half would have forced a runoff with the second-place candidate.