Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  Three years earlier, Joe Gardner had backed Moseley Braun in her primary challenge against incumbent Al Dixon, and civil rights lawyers led by Judd Miner were still in court challenging the Daley regime’s city council redistricting, but Moseley Braun’s embrace of Daley extended African American support for the mayor beyond his small band of early supporters like Valerie Jarrett and financier John Rogers Jr. Jesse Jackson Sr. campaigned for Gardner, but with Daley’s war chest at $4 million and Gardner’s at $171,000, mayoral media consultant David Axelrod had an easy campaign to oversee.

  On primary Election Day, Daley swamped Gardner 66 to 33 percent amid “one of the lowest turnouts ever among Chicago voters” while winning about 25 percent of black voters. A month later Daley defeated the better-known Roland Burris 60 to 36 percent, and political historian William Grimshaw—Jacky’s husband—told the New York Times that Daley was indeed “rebuilding the machine” that a generation earlier had made his father mayor-for-life. As another knowledgeable observer explained, Daley’s emboldened reign marked “a lessening of democracy and the centralizing of power in a new machine.”30

  Receiving almost as much coverage as the mayoral contest was the ongoing criminal prosecution of U.S. representative Mel Reynolds. In mid-January young accuser Beverly Heard again recanted her allegation that Reynolds had sex with her when she was just sixteen years old, and a Tribune editorial asked if Reynolds was “the victim of an overzealous, irresponsible prosecution.” The morning after Daley’s reelection, though, a Tribune headline announced, “Reynolds Accused of Sex with 2nd Teen,” and the paper spoke of his political career in the past tense, saying he “had been a rising star in the Democratic party.” As reports swirled that Reynolds may have paid Heard for her recantation, prosecutors filed additional charges and the congressman’s trial was scheduled for July. News reports predicted that tape recordings of 1994 phone conversations between Heard and Reynolds would be a key part of the case.

  Waiting quietly in the wings was state senator Alice Palmer, who would challenge Reynolds in the early 1996 Democratic primary if the congressman survived his legal shoals. Should Reynolds instead be convicted and forced to leave office, a special election could take place sooner. Palmer formed a federal campaign committee in late January but did little active fund-raising. Progressive women like Jean Rudd, Anne Hallett, Adele Simmons, Aurie Pennick, and Bettylu Saltzman, plus education researcher Fred Hess and local state representative Barbara Flynn Currie, all made modest, three-figure contributions. Less than a dozen people contributed as much as $1,000, including Palmer’s campaign chairman, Hal Baron, and his wife, who knew Palmer and her husband Buzz from the Harold Washington era. At least half of Palmer’s remaining four-figure contributions came from employees and relatives of developer Tony Rezko.

  Rezko was actively promoting Barack’s future prospects as well as boosting Alice Palmer’s. Tony was an enthusiastic supporter of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the prominent institution founded by entertainer Danny Thomas, and each May a Chicago fund-raising dinner took place in the Drake Hotel’s Gold Coast Ballroom overlooking Lake Michigan. Young Andy Foster was a top aide to Republican governor Jim Edgar, and several times during Edgar’s 1994 reelection race, Rezko had called to offer support. Andy thought Tony “seems like a very nice guy,” with a “very innocent” interest in politics, and a few months later, Foster happily accepted when Rezko said he had a full table of seats at the St. Jude dinner. Tony’s wife Rita was there, as was Cook County Board president John Stroger, his top aide, Orlando Jones, and the wife of a young state representative who was about to run for Congress, Patti Blagojevich. Tony also introduced Andy to Barack and Michelle Obama, and Andy recalled that “Obama’s embarrassed” as Tony told Andy what an important person Barack would become. Andy believed Tony had clearly taken “a shine to Barack,” who was “very impressive,” and “it was a delightful evening” even though “Patti was a little annoying.”

  Barack had first been introduced to Alice Palmer by his Project VOTE! deputy Brian Banks, and as Palmer started pulling together an informal steering committee in the late spring of 1995, Barack began taking part in it. If Palmer challenged Reynolds in next year’s Democratic primary, she could not simultaneously run for reelection to the Senate, although in a special election, she could run for Congress while keeping her seat. In a pair of April and May conversations with his friend Ellen Schumer, Barack talked about his new Annenberg role and Alice Palmer as well as Ellen’s COFI launch.

  A May 1 lunch was rescheduled for May 11 because Barack had to prepare for a deposition, but Schumer’s notes from that Thursday lunch document Barack’s focus. Ellen jotted three large headings: “(1) COFI, (2) Annenberg, (3) Alice Palmer,” but only blank space was under the first two. Under the third, she wrote: “Cong. seat—Senate seat??—What exactly are the boundaries—includes all—Support from A.P.—Toni Preckwinkle?,” the 4th Ward alderman, and “Arenda Troutman,” the 20th Ward alderman whose district encompassed Woodlawn. “Senate seat” and “Support from A.P.” were more than suggestive, and then just four days later, law school debts and mortgage payments notwithstanding, Barack made his first political contribution, writing a check for $500 to Friends of Alice Palmer. A second for an additional $500 followed four weeks later.

  As he thought about seeking Palmer’s state Senate seat, Barack drove down to Springfield in Michelle’s hand-me-down Saab, which had supplanted the rusty old Toyota as his regular car. For Senate Democrats, the 1995 spring session had proven exceptionally unpleasant, with Republican Senate president James “Pate” Philip and his caucus, who held a 33–26 majority, freezing the minority party out of any role in state budget decisions. Angry floor statements by normally mild-mannered progressive Democrats like Miguel del Valle, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, and Palmer all testified to what a strained atmosphere characterized the Senate under Philip’s resolute rule.

  Barack later recalled, “I had gone down there to visit before I made the decision to run and had spent a couple of days down there,” and a wide range of people remembered meeting Barack in Alice Palmer’s company, either during the final days of that spring session that ended unusually early on May 26 or in the weeks immediately following. Down in Springfield, young representative Jeff Schoenberg, who had met Barack three years earlier during Project VOTE!, ran into him in the legislative office building that adjoined the handsome State Capitol, and recalls that Barack mentioned Palmer and explained that “he was working with her.” African American lobbyist John Hooker, a onetime student of the late Al Raby, later Commonwealth Edison’s liaison to Mayor Harold Washington, and by 1995 ComEd’s director of governmental affairs, first met Barack when he “worked closely with” Palmer. Indeed, in Hooker’s eyes, Barack was “a real close confidant and pal of Alice Palmer,” and Hooker’s ComEd colleague Frank Clark felt that Palmer “saw him more as a protégé.” Likewise, African American AFSCME lobbyist Ray Harris knew that “she and Barack were close” and that Palmer indeed “mentored him to an extent.”

  As the summer began, Mel Reynolds’s legal prospects looked increasingly dim. A long Tribune retrospective on Reynolds’s career said “he was eloquent and cared deeply about the underprivileged and dispossessed,” and the head of the Rhodes Scholarship program at the University of Oxford recalled Reynolds as “a very ambitious man who was determined to be a politician.” A former pollster said that Reynolds “felt like he had to be in Congress. He almost felt he was chosen.” The list of unpaid debts that Reynolds had accumulated, however, now approximated $145,000, and another former Rhodes Scholar who knew him well explained that “you were never quite sure who the real Mel was. You could never put your finger on whether he was a real operator or he was a genuine nice guy.”

  For Barack, the prospect of succeeding Palmer if and when she took Reynolds’s place in Congress was one he mulled all throughout June. He mentioned the possibility to Allison Davis, who responded with astonishment. “You must be crazy
. Have you ever been to Springfield?” In contrast, Judd Miner was supportive because he knew how Barack “was struggling with what he could do to have the greatest impact on things he cared about.”

  Given Judd’s own deep ambivalence about litigation, he was also sympathetic to Barack’s view, as Barack later put it, that “the reason I got into politics was simply because I saw the law as being inadequate to the task” of achieving social change. “The idea of participating in the legislative process,” Barack recalled a few years later, “became more interesting the more I saw the limits of social change through the courts.” That was “something that I had been aware of when I had been studying law and legal history, but became much more apparent to me by the time that I was actually a practicing lawyer.” Issues like “providing adequate funding for education or creating job opportunities . . . weren’t really amenable to change through the courts.” Succeeding Palmer would be a “fairly attractive starting point,” Judd appreciated, because “it was the Senate as opposed to the House,” and “it wasn’t being alderman.”

  Allison Davis remembered, “I saw Alice coming and going all the time” to Barack’s small office right next to his, and Steve Derks, a young health lobbyist for Lutheran General Health System, which Davis Miner represented, was asked to talk with Barack about the Senate. Derks recalled sitting in Barack’s “crummy little office” and saying that the number one thing he had learned in Springfield was “the enormous influence of money in electoral politics.” Steve suggested to Barack that “he might do better to stay in the private sector, focus on the things he cares about” and “create a difference that way.” Barack “ultimately asked if I would help him if he decided to go forward,” and Steve reluctantly agreed. But he still “tried to tell him not to do it,” as did Judd’s old friend Marilyn Katz, who had also worked for Harold Washington. “Don’t run for the Senate,” Marilyn told Barack, arguing that state senators were virtually invisible in Chicago. In rebuttal, Barack raised “the Harold Washington example,” describing how Washington had moved from the legislature to Congress and then to the mayor’s office.

  Barack also discussed the idea with Jean Rudd and her husband Lionel Bolin, asking the politically experienced Lionel to be his campaign treasurer if he went ahead. Lionel agreed, and they invited Barack and Michelle over one night to meet their friend Larry Suffredin, an attorney and lobbyist. Suffredin was “so impressed” by Barack that “I thought this is a guy who could be the next mayor of Chicago,” and Larry invited Barack to lunch with his African American law partner Paul Williams, who had served three terms as a state representative after working for Harold Washington in Springfield. At lunch, “I tried to talk Barack out of running for the state Senate,” because “I didn’t see a mayor really coming from the general assembly,” especially given the Republican control of the state Senate. Williams was even more wary of Barack’s belief that he could inherit Palmer’s seat when she ran for Congress, warning him that if Palmer did not defeat Reynolds, she would want to retain her Senate seat. But neither man’s comments dissuaded Barack. “He was looking at should he run,” Larry recalled, and “he made it clear that he wanted to.”

  Judd Miner had introduced Barack to his friend Matt Piers, a 1974 UC Law School graduate who had been Judd’s deputy corporation counsel in Harold Washington’s administration. Matt and his wife Maria Torres agreed to invite Barack and Michelle for dinner along with Chuy Garcia and his wife Evelyn so that Barack could meet another progressive state senator. Matt knew Barack was “much more interested in a political career than a legal career,” and that night at dinner, after “everybody had had a lot of very good red wine to drink,” the conversation turned to how “politics are really sleazy here.” That theme was music to Michelle’s ears, because when Barack had first broached the possibility of succeeding Palmer, Michelle’s reaction had been highly negative.

  “I married you because you’re cute, and you’re smart, but this is the dumbest thing you could have ever asked,” Michelle later said she told Barack. “We would always have discussions about how do you create change,” debates that had stimulated her move from her city job to Public Allies, but “politics didn’t come into the discussion until the seat opened up,” Michelle later said. “I wasn’t a proponent of politics as a way you could make change,” and she believed “that politics is for dirty, nasty people who aren’t really trying to do much in the world.” So Michelle’s response had been “No, don’t do it,” an attitude also informed by her strong desire to have children and a strong belief that her offspring should enjoy the same sort of upbringing she and her brother Craig had had.

  “They were a very, very close-knit family,” her sister-in-law Janis explained, “and Michelle really liked the idea that her parents were present for whatever she was involved in. So she had the same expectation for her husband, so she was conflicted because she knew that Barack was going to have some kind of job that would take him away” if he ran for a state office. “So she had a little bit of hesitation,” and that night at dinner, with Matt in particular kidding Barack about wanting to be a politician, Michelle enthusiastically chimed in.

  “Barack was looking a little somber,” and when Matt went to the bathroom, Barack waylaid him before Matt could return to the dining room. He “grabbed me by my shirt and he pushed me into” another room “and he said ‘Listen, god damn it, Michelle doesn’t want me to get involved in politics, and I’ve already made the decision that I have, and now if I can’t count on my friends to help me with this, I’m really going to get nowhere, so I’d appreciate it if you would be quiet and stop everybody from talking about it.’” It was clear that “the wine was kind of talking,” yet Matt recalled, “I was quite shocked. . . . There was both an assertiveness and a familiarity” in Barack’s manner, and while he was “not angry,” there was no doubt that “he was real serious.” Michelle’s comments that night “made it clear she wanted him to get on a tenure track at UC Law School” and that “she was not at all interested in being a politician’s wife.”

  Years later Michelle remembered, “I thought Barack would be a partner at a law firm or maybe teach or work in the community,” but by late June 1995, there was no question that Barack had his eyes firmly set on succeeding Alice Palmer in the Illinois state Senate if she gave up her seat to run for Congress. Barack later said that Michelle finally relented, telling him, “Why don’t you give it a chance?”

  Just as Barack had told Ellen Schumer, thanks to Tony Rezko he won a warm introduction to 4th Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle, who remembered Barack from Project VOTE! Preckwinkle told him that Palmer’s public endorsement was critical, and that he must also introduce himself to newly elected 5th Ward alderman Barbara Holt, whose district included most of Hyde Park and who also had succeeded Alan Dobry as 5th Ward committeeman. Holt remembered Alice Palmer telephoning, and “she asked me if I would meet with him.” Holt agreed, Barack visited her ward office, and “I decided that I would support him.” Similar outreach took place with Hyde Park state representative Barbara Flynn Currie, who knew Michelle from Public Allies, and Currie too agreed to back Barack because of Palmer’s endorsement.31

  As Mel Reynolds’s criminal trial approached, political jockeying intensified. The Tribune reported that Gha-Is F. Askia, a Muslim employee of the state attorney general’s Chicago office who six years earlier had won election to a South Shore elementary school council, would run for Palmer’s Senate seat. In Hyde Park, rumors circulated that Janet Oliver-Hill, who that spring had lost the 5th Ward aldermanic race to Holt, might be interested, but she declined. Then, on June 25, a Sun-Times gossip columnist broke the news that Alice Palmer would formally announce her candidacy on June 27. At a Loop hotel, Palmer declared, “I am a hands-on, roll-up-your-sleeves legislator,” and she avoided bashing her ostensible opponent. “Pray for Mel Reynolds and vote for me!”

  The Tribune’s story stated that Palmer “will be giving up her legislative seat to run for Congress,�
�� as would be necessary if she ran in the 1996 primary, and the weekly Hyde Park Herald reported that “talk of who might replace Palmer, assuming she wins the race, has already begun. One front-runner might be Palmer supporter Barack Obama, an attorney with a background in community organization and voter registration efforts. Obama, who has lived ‘in and out’ of Hyde Park for 10 years, is currently serving as chairman of the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Obama said that even though the election was a year away, ‘I am seriously exploring that campaign.’”

  Less than forty-eight hours later, a Tribune gossip column predicted that “Barack Obama will announce he’s running for the state Senate seat occupied by Alice Palmer . . . Obama, who has worked with Palmer, is an attorney at Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland—and newly published author of Dreams From My Father,” although publication was still a few weeks away. The report was correct, and six days later, Barack received a check for $5,000 as a loan to cover campaign start-up expenses from prominent, just-retired seventy-five-year-old Cadillac dealer Al Johnson, who previously had been county board president John Stroger’s top contributor, Mel Reynolds’s finance chairman in his successful 1992 race, and one of the late Harold Washington’s closest supporters.