Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  For his general election race against Yehudah, Barack had done a modicum of fund-raising, bringing in a total of $54,000 during the fall, $23,000 of which came from political action committees, including $5,000 from the Illinois Education Association and $3,000 from the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association. His friend John Schmidt, his Joyce Foundation board colleague Carlton Guthrie, and his U of C Law School colleague Martha Nussbaum topped individual contributors with $1,000 each. Old personal friends like Altgeld Gardens school principal Dr. Alma Jones, St. Sabina’s Father Mike Pfleger, Sidley’s Gerri Alexis, Northwestern’s Bob Bennett, and Hope Center colleague Sokoni Karanja all gave from $200 to $500, as did new friends Jim Reynolds and Dr. Eric Whitaker, whom Barack had first met playing pickup basketball at Harvard.

  After giving his check to Kim Lightford, Barack headed to Loyola University of Chicago on the city’s Far North Side, where progressive lobbyist Doug Dobmeyer had organized a two-day public policy symposium whose plenary speakers included Barack and Aurie Pennick, who a decade earlier had funded Barack’s work at DCP. Eager to demystify Illinois government, Barack told the audience that “there is very little policy making that takes place in Springfield that is subject to consistent, ongoing, thoughtful public debate. In fact, the rules and the processes that are set forth in Springfield are primarily designed to constrict debate as much as possible and to localize the decision-making power in as few hands as possible.” One example was how “the vast majority of Americans would like to see serious gun control” but “it doesn’t pass because there is this huge disconnect between what people think and what legislators think and are willing to act upon.”

  Equally pressing was “the more fundamental issue of what do we do with this burgeoning number of people who have no health insurance and are one illness away from bankruptcy or worse.” Barack’s organizing roots were evident as he explained how “the people who are guilty of disempowering the population are not only the bad guys. . . . Sometimes it’s also us, sometimes it’s the experts or the advocates who are not that much better at advocating on behalf of and with the communities that they purport to represent, so that the lobbyists down in Springfield who represent a host of good causes that I strongly believe in oftentimes have very few troops behind them, have not engaged in conversations with the very communities that they’re representing, and the legislators are aware of that.” While generally the good guys “lose because they have less money and less resources,” to prevail politically “would take more than simply being armed with good facts and making good presentations, it would also have to do with the fact that they had mobilized a constituency around these policy questions.”

  Barack expressly advocated “public financing for campaigns” and said he was concerned that the Juvenile Justice Reform Act had been overwhelmingly approved “despite the fact that policy research argued against the bill” and without the communities that would be most affected by it knowing what it would do to minority youth. “Policy research for the working poor” should address “issues of economics that diverse populations have in common” as a way to “resuscitate the notion that government action can be effective,” because “there has been a systematic . . . propaganda campaign against the possibility of government action and its efficacy, and I think some of it has been deserved. The Chicago Housing Authority has not been a model of good policy-making, and neither necessarily have been the Chicago Public Schools.” The most fundamental question was “how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot,” and “regional organizations” bridging urban-suburban boundaries were one promising option.57

  A few days before the November election, Barack signed two identical, grammatically incorrect four-sentence letters to a pair of state housing officials urging them to support Allison Davis and Tony Rezko’s efforts to construct a ninety-seven-unit Kenwood apartment building that would house senior citizens. Barack would later say he did not remember such mundane correspondence, which exemplified the neighborhood-related minutiae his new district aide, Chicago native Jen Mason, dealt with regularly. The next day the Sun-Times joined the Tribune in endorsing the “highly regarded” Barack for reelection, and a news story in the weekly Hyde Park Herald termed Barack “wildly popular.”

  On Election Day, Barack swamped Yesse Yehudah by 45,486 to 5,526, winning more than 89 percent of the vote, but Democratic U.S. senator Carol Moseley Braun and gubernatorial nominee Glenn Poshard both lost. Moseley Braun carried Chicago by almost 400,000 votes, yet lost to Republican Peter Fitzgerald statewide by just under 100,000. In contrast, the conservative Po-shard’s Chicago margin was 160,000 votes less than Moseley Braun’s, and he lost statewide to Republican George Ryan by only 120,000. Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller wrote that “Poshard could have won if he had simply introduced himself to voters,” but “he was virtually invisible as far as TV ads go,” a direct result of his refusal to accept corporate and political action committee contributions. Poshard had won the Democratic primary despite being outspent more than two to one by John Schmidt, but George Ryan outspent Poshard by almost three to one, a margin of more than $6 million.

  Democrats did capture the secretary of state’s office, with African American Jesse White, the Cook County recorder of deeds, winning more than 55 percent statewide, and also the race for state comptroller, where thirty-year-old Dan Hynes, whose father was a well-known Cook County Democrat, won more than 58 percent in defeating conservative Republican state senator Chris Lauzen. Republican attorney general Jim Ryan won reelection with more than 60 percent of the vote, and Capitol Fax declared that Ryan and Hynes “are the future of their respective parties.” Sun-Times political columnist Steve Neal similarly contended that “such rising stars as Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. and state Sen. Barack Obama of Hyde Park are strong possibilities for statewide office.”

  Barack told the Tribune he intended to develop what the paper called “a specific program for universal health care,” but almost nothing happened during the legislature’s veto session. In the Senate, Republicans had picked up Penny Severn’s seat and no Democratic challengers had prevailed, leading to more grumbling about Emil Jones’s political judgment. In the wake of that disappointment, chief of staff Mike Hoffmann moved to the comptroller’s office and was replaced by Courtney Nottage, previously Jones’s legal counsel. On the veto session’s first Wednesday evening, Barack told Terry Link they needed go to Springfield’s Lincoln Library before their poker game because Barack was signing copies of Dreams From My Father at a reading. Proceeds from the book sales would go to the Illinois Coalition for Community Services. Link did not even know Barack had written a book, but senators such as Debbie Halvorson and Pat Welch and staffers such as John Charles and Dave Joens helped make for “a great crowd” and a good many sales.

  Joens asked Barack to appear on the University of Illinois at Springfield’s Inside Illinois Government TV talk show, and on the last day of veto session Barack taped a thirty-minute appearance with host Jack Van Der Slik. Barack mentioned the “increasing Palestinian community” in the western part of his district, his desire to create “greater tax equity in the state,” and explained that “the committees are really where the action is in Springfield. . . . Most of the substantive debate and the changes take place in committee, before or after committee. That’s where the negotiations take place.” In the Judiciary Committee, “we see a lot of bills that purport to be tough on crime,” but Republican chairman Carl Hawkinson was so “very fair and very thoughtful” that “oftentimes in committee, we can bottle up some of the more egregious demagoguery that often takes place around issues of crime.” Judiciary “can still be a very frustrating committee,” and Barack also felt “certain frustrations being in the minority.” But his biggest complaint was how regressive Illinois’s tax system was, especially the constitutionally mandated flat in
come tax. In Springfield as in Chicago, “there is a difference in culture between the insiders and the outsiders, and I try to be an outsider who can work with the insiders.” Pointing to wealthy Peter Fitzgerald’s recent U.S. Senate victory, “money as opposed to just organization is the currency for winning elections, and I think that is something that I’m very troubled with.” Asked about potential writing plans, Barack replied, “I may spend next summer writing something having to do with public policy” and “I may combine my interest in politics and law to write something a little more academic.”

  Two weeks before Christmas Barack had another Annenberg Challenge board meeting, as well as Miner Barnhill’s holiday party, this year at George Galland’s home in Evanston. Then Barack, Michelle, and five-month-old Malia flew to Honolulu to spend Christmas with his grandmother Madelyn and his sister Maya, who flew in from New York. With Madelyn all alone in the same modest tenth-floor apartment on South Beretania Street where she had lived for more than thirty years, the Hawaii trip had become an annual Christmastime tradition as well as a welcome respite from Chicago winters.58

  The U of C Law School’s winter quarter began the Monday after New Year’s, with Barack again teaching Voting Rights on Monday mornings and Friday afternoons. It attracted only ten students, one of whom, Laura Mullens, had had Con Law III with Barack the previous autumn. “He was very careful to be inclusive and to be respectful of people with dissenting points of view,” Laura remembered. She lived south of the law school, in Woodlawn, and she shopped at a grocery store farther south that had “very kind” employees and where she was the only southern white female customer. She always wrote a check when paying, but one time when her total came to maybe $42, the automatic TeleCheck service declined her check. “That made me mad,” because she was “meticulous” with her checking account. “How dare you think my check’s not good.” In fact, Barack had had a similar experience when he was purchasing a set of golf clubs at a discount sports store outside Chicago. “I’m sorry, sir, we can’t acccept your check,” Barack recounted to Dan Shomon. “I think he ended up using a credit card,” Shomon recalled, but Barack and Laura each suspected that their zip codes—60615 for East View, but the far more heavily black 60637 for Laura—were subject to redlining in credit scoring just as in home mortgage lending. When Laura proposed writing her course paper on the practice, Barack jumped at the idea, recounting Laura’s experience to Shomon as additional support for his idea of introducing a bill to combat such discrimination.

  On Wednesday, January 13, Barack was sworn in for his second term in the Illinois Senate—this one, unlike his first, for four years, pursuant to the Senate’s staggered, three-terms-per-decade structure. The Chicago newspapers greeted the new session with stories suggesting that the free passes the city’s superb museums gave to legislators violated the new gift ban provision. “Of all the things we have to worry about in terms of influence peddling in Springfield, museums fall pretty low down on my list,” Barack remarked, saying he had never used his. “The whole intent of the gift ban was to get at the obvious and serious ethical infractions that have occurred on occasion in the past.” Newly elected Chicago Democrats Lisa Madigan and Ira Silverstein joined Barack and Terry Link in the junior members’ suite of adjoining offices in first-floor room 105, with Barack shifting from 105D to 105B, and just before the swearing-in Barack met the youngest and most junior new Republican, thirty-four-year-old Dave Sullivan, who had been appointed to replace a senator who had passed away just after the November election.

  Sullivan had served for six years as an executive assistant to George Ryan, now Illinois’s new Republican governor, and in every Springfield bar legislators and lobbyists were celebrating Ryan’s election. Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller conceded that Edgar was “a pretty decent governor” but was “almost completely incapable of working with the General Assembly.” Many members agreed with Debbie Halvorson’s description of Edgar as “cold and distant.” Miller wrote that Ryan’s inauguration felt “like a breath of long-awaited fresh air,” and Springfield newspaperman Bernie Schoenburg explained that the former House Speaker “was of the legislature and understood it.” Ryan’s arrival promised to transform the relationship between the governor’s office and the Senate because, as Miller wrote, Ryan and Pate Philip “are great friends” and “are very close.” But Ryan’s campaign against Glenn Poshard had shown that Ryan was now doing “his best to throw off his reactionary roots,” giving Emil Jones an opportunity “to take advantage of the coming clashes by publicly siding with Ryan and taunting Philip to follow the lead of his governor.” Edgar recalled that he and Jones had never had much of a relationship because Jones “was looking for jobs” and “I didn’t trade a lot on jobs and things like that.” But Ryan was a political trader, and Rich Miller predicted that “gun control should be the juiciest opportunity for Jones to create division between Ryan and the gun-loving hunter Philip.” Miller likewise warned that Ryan’s greatest weakness is that “he trusts his friends too much.”

  With the Senate in session only occasionally before late February, Barack was able to give a Martin Luther King holiday lecture at Loyola University of Chicago’s law school and join his friend Matt Piers and wife Maria Torres for dinner at Bob Bennett and Harriet Trop’s home. Michelle was about to return to a heavier schedule at the U of C, and the Obamas were thus looking to hire a full-time babysitter. By late that winter they had hired Glorina Casabal, a friendly woman in her mid-forties, whom they would pay at an annual rate of $16,000. “With a full-time employee suddenly on our payroll,” Barack later wrote, family finances became ever more strained.

  One piece of financial good fortune came via a lecture agency, Jodi Solomon Speakers Bureau, which for several years had listed Barack as available to talk about “A Story of Race” based on his book. That winter Carleton College, a well-respected liberal arts institution in central Minnesota, agreed to pay $3,500 for Barack to keynote its Black History Month convocation in early February. Barack began his remarks by apologizing for a cold he had caught from seven-month-old Malia, and he spoke informally about how some people questioned his involvement in politics just as others had doubted the value of community organizing. Everyone needed to commit themselves to “something that is bigger than yourself” and to embrace what Martin Luther King Jr., drawing on the Hegelian dialectic, had “called a both/and mentality” rather than the “either/or mentality” that constricted most public debates. Saying that “you have to have some hope to get out of your own private life,” Barack implicitly referenced Rev. Jeremiah Wright in declaring that “there’s something audacious about hope.”

  Barack’s relatively brief speech left considerable time for questions. The first led Barack into a long discussion of welfare reform and the need for more jobs that paid a living wage. “The minimum wage right now is so low that even people who are working full-time essentially do not get out of poverty.” But “political power has shifted in this country to suburban areas that don’t see a lot of unemployed people,” and job-starved inner-city neighborhoods were witnessing “the disintegration of the fabric of community life.” In such areas, churches often were the only “institutions that are still cohesive enough and bring people together,” and “the most successful community development organizations . . . are typically ones that are housed in churches or based in an ecumenical effort among a group of churches.” In Barack’s experience, “if you try to just mobilize people around a purely economic or political agenda, it won’t sustain itself and get at some of the very difficult, knotty problems that exist.”

  Barack also bluntly volunteered that “affirmative action is more important symbolically in some ways than it is as a practical matter. First of all, affirmative action does not function once you get out of college unless you are in a very narrow range of government jobs.” Chicago was more than 30 percent black, but “if you go into any major office building you will not see more than five percent black people in there, and most of
them are secretaries, receptionists, and delivery people.” The federal EEOC “does a miserable job” combating employment discrimination “because it’s been starved for funding by Congress,” and Barack referenced his experience in Donnell v. Comdisco Inc. by telling the audience that he had one client who had been “called nigger by the CEO of a Fortune 500 company in front of the entire office.” Barack acknowledged that “there are some legitimate grievances from the majority community in any form of affirmative action,” because “some individuals may be marginally harmed.”

  Finally, Barack said that while “it is not a healthy thing for our civic life that unions have become so beaten down,” it was also the case that “in Chicago, the Teachers Union needs to do some work to get out in front of change as opposed to being a barrier to change.” Overall, “the union movement has been fairly myopic” in focusing simply on “issues of wages and benefits.” Unions need to “think about the people who are unemployed and not only the people who are already in the union.” They also should consider “how do we tie our own benefits and wages to performance of a corporation and think of ourselves as shareholders in that company as opposed to simply employees.”59