Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  Neal reported that well-known figures like John Schmidt and Newton Minow and prominent black financiers John Rogers and Peter Bynoe were supporting Barack, but warning signs loomed. Even though 17th Ward alderman Terry Peterson, like Schmidt a former aide to Richard Daley, had joined his City Council colleagues Preckwinkle, Hairston, and Thomas in backing Barack, Neal warned that the mayor “might have reason for concern if Obama should emerge as a potential challenger in the 2003 mayoral election. That’s why Daley may be neutral for Rush.” Neal also noted that even though Jesse Jackson Jr. “is friendly with Obama,” he “doesn’t want competition as the rising star of the Illinois delegation,” and Jackson was “committed to Rush.” If Barack won, both youthful Illinois “comptroller Dan Hynes and Rep. Jackson might get eclipsed,” and so neither of their fathers, powerful former county assessor Tom Hynes and Jesse Jackson Sr., “want Obama to become the city’s rising political star.”71

  Sunday’s Chicago Tribune called Barack “one of the bright young stars of the local African-American political world” and reported that his campaign “claims”—a bit optimistically—“to have raised more than $100,000” already. That afternoon, an hour before Barack’s event at the downtown Palmer House, Rickey Hendon introduced Donne Trotter to several hundred people at Trotter’s South Side district office. Trotter had the support of two aldermen, but he did not have the support of his longtime mentor, 8th Ward committeeman and Cook County Board president John Stroger, who already had endorsed Rush. Barack’s announcement drew a crowd of three hundred, with many of them laughing when Barack used a famous local phrase to declare that “Nobody sent me. I’m not part of some long-standing political organization. I have no fancy sponsors. I’m not even from Chicago. My name is Obama. Despite that fact, somebody sent me . . . the men on the corner in Woodlawn drowning their sorrows in alcohol . . . the women working two jobs . . . They’re all telling me we can’t wait.” Directly attacking Rush, Barack said that “for the past seven years we’ve been looking for leadership, and it has not been forthcoming. We can’t afford to wait another seven years.” District residents “deserve to have a congressman who can make a real difference in their lives, and in the life of our community.” Local television cameras captured Barack saying that leadership means “framing the debate on the national issues that affect us deeply: gun violence, economic development in the inner city, health care for the uninsured.” He warned that the district “is one of the most economically distressed areas in the nation. Our schools still don’t make the grade, and our kids are being cheated out of the opportunity to prepare themselves for a high-tech, highly competitive future. Too many of our youth have been lost to the streets. The culture of violence threatens our neighborhoods.” Rush “represents a politics that is rooted in the past, a reactive politics that isn’t very good at coming up with concrete solutions.”

  WLS Channel 7’s evening newscast told viewers that Trotter and Obama were “serious competition” for Rush and that the primary “could be a close one.” Barack was described as a “civil rights attorney and the first black president of the Harvard Law Review,” while Trotter was called a “Springfield veteran.” Viewers were reminded of Rush’s “landslide” loss against Daley, and that he “may be vulnerable.” Barack told one print reporter, “I don’t believe Congressman Rush’s voter base is firm,” and he dismissed Trotter’s candidacy. “I’m not concerned about who else is in the race. By January we’ll know who’s serious and who’s not.” Monday’s newspapers paid little attention to the dueling announcement ceremonies, but when the Sun-Times followed up two days later with a serious look at the race, Barack said “the reason I’m running is not because he did poorly in the mayoral race.” Instead, “Congressman Rush’s record articulating an agenda for community building has been lacking . . . I think the mayor’s race has just underscored his inability to shape that proactive agenda that voters have been looking for.” Barack promised “not only a strong message but a lot of energy in our campaign,” and declared that “part of what we are talking about is a transition from a politics of protest to a politics of progress.”

  David Axelrod had walked away from Barack’s campaign after the threatening phone calls from Washington, but he was happy to tell the Hyde Park Herald what he thought of the race. Increasing Barack’s name recognition throughout the entire congressional district should be the campaign’s top priority. “It’s a challenging task against a long-term incumbent who has universal name recognition. The one thing Barack may have is the ability to raise money and that obviously affects his name recognition.” Overall, “I think it’s a competitive race,” Axelrod said, “but I don’t think you should ever underestimate the power of incumbency.”72

  Chapter Eight

  FAILURE AND RECOVERY

  CHICAGO AND SPRINGFIELD

  OCTOBER 1999–JANUARY 2003

  Barack’s declaration of candidacy attracted little attention, and the next day was an immediate reminder that not until early December could he be a full-time candidate, for autumn classes at the U of C Law School got under way on Monday, September 27. While Voting Rights had been removed from early 2000’s winter quarter schedule, in the meantime Barack was again teaching Con Law III and Current Issues in Racism and the Law. Con Law met three mornings a week at 8:30 A.M. and drew thirty-five students, and on the first day, Barack said he would have to reschedule several classes in November because of the veto session. Nate Sutton, a 3L, remembered being surprised by how quickly Barack learned students’ names, and it soon became clear that Barack “really had a genuine ability to argue and understand both sides of issues” and “empathize or identify with the bases for arguments on both sides.” Barack knew the cases “extraordinarily well,” but even on issues like abortion “you would not know what his position was.” In the race class, which attracted thirty-two students, 3L Joe Khan also realized how “very approachable” Barack seemed. Both courses remained unchanged from prior years, and 3L Andrew Abrams was impressed by how “enthusiastic and supportive of students” Barack was. When the quarter ended, the two classes gave Barack 8.92 and 8.74 on UCLS’s 10-point scale, but a brand-new query was even more instructive. “Would you take a course with this professor again?” with three possible answers: yes, no, and “no influence.” Barack’s numbers were impressive indeed: a total of forty-three yeses, ten no-influences, and only a single no, just a fraction shy of 80 percent affirmative.

  In the political realm, several significant people expressed displeasure about Barack entering the congressional race. Bobby Rush’s unhappiness was to be expected. “I was shocked, disappointed, and, you know, frankly somewhat angry,” Rush later recalled. “If there are ten issues, we agree on 9.5” of them. “I didn’t see the rationale for it.” Media consultant Eric Adelstein lined up Washington pollster Diane Feldman to work on Rush’s campaign, and research guru Don Wiener began looking into Barack’s Springfield record and perusing back issues of the Hyde Park Herald. By early October, Rush finally opened a campaign office, but “I don’t think Bobby was taking it seriously,” field consultant Jerry Morrison explained. Another month would pass before campaign manager Louanner Peters came aboard and spokesperson Maudlyne Ihejirika was hired.

  With Cook County Board president and 8th Ward powerhouse John Stroger backing Rush, Donne Trotter’s campaign was largely adrift, but Trotter hoped to raise sufficient funds to mount a credible effort, as much against his rival Obama as against Rush. But Barack’s biggest problem was at home, because even though Michelle had said yes to the race, once it got started, her unhappiness was visible and sometimes audible. “What I notice about men, all men, is that their order is me, my family,” etc., “but me is first,” while “for women, me is fourth,” Michelle observed. Barack admitted in one joint interview that “we’ve had our rough patches,” and Michelle immediately added, “there were many.” Their unceasing financial strains and the need for child care were constant factors. “They had a lot of student
loans, and there was a lot of tension around that. Barack’s choices made her life harder,” Michelle’s friend Cindy Moelis recalled. “There was a lot of tension and stress,” Michelle agreed, and asked in retrospect whether she was both angry and lonely because of how much time Barack spent on politics, Michelle responded forcefully: “absolutely . . . absolutely.” Friends like Kathy Stell knew that Michelle had “an ambivalence about politics in general” that showed in the “skepticism and cynicism” she felt about politicians. Dan Shomon, now Barack’s full-time campaign manager, regularly witnessed Michelle’s disdain that her super-talented husband was “lowering himself” to electoral politics. Barack and Michelle had dinner every so often with Allison Davis, Bob Bennett, and their wives, and Allison remembered that sometimes “things were unpleasant” because “Michelle was really pissed about the Bobby Rush campaign.” That attitude also manifested itself whenever Michelle, with or without Barack, joined Bernardine Dohrn, Bill Ayers, and Mona and Rashid Khalidi at one of those couples’ dinners. Being a politician’s wife was not something Michelle welcomed, and “I remember lots of conversations” during which Michelle was “really resisting it and fighting, fighting it,” Bernardine recalled. Michelle “hates it . . . it’s not the life she imagined, not the life she’d prefer.” Craig Huffman, Michelle’s young protégé, knew that Barack’s political life “created enormous tension” at home. Craig remembered calling Barack one fall Saturday to discuss the campaign. “Something had happened, and Michelle, I could hear her in the background. She wasn’t happy with him, I’ll leave it at that,” he recounted. “Hey man, I need to go,” Barack apologized as he hung up. Like Kathy Stell and Bernardine Dohrn, Craig realized Michelle was not “enamored with politicians” and was not “the willing political wife.” That tension left Barack “chasing something that your partner’s not 100 percent on board with.”1

  Eager to draw attention to his campaign, Barack challenged Rush to five debates, just as Rush had done with Mayor Daley. The Tribune and the Defender reported Barack’s challenge, but the incumbent ignored him, just as Daley had Rush. “My assumption was that the race would generate a lot of coverage and I could really focus on making arguments about what I would like to do in Congress,” Barack explained, but with the election five months away, Barack realized that “people really weren’t paying attention that much,” and after the two stories about his debate challenge, more than two weeks passed before any newspaper again mentioned Barack.

  Thanks largely to Dan Shomon, as well as many former and present U of C law students, Barack’s campaign did draw a good number of weekend volunteers. With Will Burns as deputy campaign manager and Cynthia Miller as Barack’s scheduler staffing an office at 87th Street and Cottage Grove, and Shomon and fund-raiser Amy Szarek manning one at 95th and Western Avenue, leafleting and canvassing began. One weekend media consultant Chris Sautter joined Barack, Dan, and 4th Ward alderman Toni Preckwinkle on a daylong series of stops at neighborhood events. Preckwinkle took the lead in introducing Barack, but Sautter realized that “nobody knew who he was.” Later in the afternoon, Chris and Barack ended up playing pickup basketball with some teenagers who had no clue that Barack was a congressional candidate. It was “a relaxing day,” but even the pickup game underscored that “nobody knew Barack.”

  Barack called friends and lobbyists to ask for the maximum $1,000-per-person contribution. “You really think you can win?” Scott Turow asked. Barack insisted that Rush was unpopular and vulnerable, and Scott reluctantly wrote a check. City of Chicago lobbyist Bill Luking gave Donne Trotter a $1,000 check at the end of September and soon learned that Barack was keeping an eye on the disclosure reports detailing contributions to his opponents. “Within days, Barack tracked me down and said, ‘I trust you will be helpful to all your friends running for Congress!” Luking was surprised by how “very aggressive” Barack was, and some months later he also gave $1,000 to Barack. Jim Reynolds had introduced African American insurance executive Les Coney to Barack, and Coney agreed to contribute, but with young children at home, Les was less than eager to write a $1,000 check. Barack “kept following up to say ‘Hey, where’s that check, Les?’” and at the end of October, Coney handed it over. By then Barack had also garnered $1,000 apiece from friends like Bernard Loyd and Matt Piers, brother-in-law Craig Robinson, black financier Quintin Primo, black attorney Peter Bynoe and his wife, lobbyist Larry Suffredin, law school colleagues David Strauss and Lawrence Lessig and Lessig’s spouse, plus old Law Review colleague Julius Genachowski. Newt Minow prevailed upon his friend John Bryan, CEO of Sara Lee Corp., to write a check, and Valerie Jarrett’s boss Daniel Levin gave $1,000 as well. School principal Alma Jones, who had followed Barack’s career ever since mentoring him in Altgeld Gardens twelve years earlier, contributed $300.

  Keeping up with his other obligations, Barack spoke at a mid-October forum on welfare reform and women of color, where he told listeners how “one of the things I’ve seen in Springfield is that budget concerns override a lot of moral issues or ethical issues or the desire for consistency.” Addressing a sympathetic crowd, Barack explained that “any program dealing with welfare is going to have a disproportionate impact on people of color because we are disproportionately represented. Any failure in the health care system to provide quality health care is going to disproportionately affect people of color because we are disproportionately in need of health care.” Barack stressed that “a black face or a brown face is painted on poverty in this country,” and as a result “a lot of the policies that are being implemented are targeted towards poor people, and it’s politically useful to feed into racist stereotypes to implement the policy.” Barack emphasized the importance of distinguishing “between those policies that help women, families, children, teenagers make intelligent choices in their lives and are thereby empowering, versus those policies that are essentially punitive and try to restrict choices.” For example, “I can envision policies and programs that offer abstinence as a choice to young women that are not punitive in attempting to reinforce oppressive notions of gender hierarchy because they also target young men and their irresponsibility in terms of how they think about sex.” Barack added that “the instinct of a lot of our constituencies out in the neighborhoods is that there is a problem that people take sexuality or childbearing too lightly and don’t consider this a sacred endeavor.” When anyone under fifteen years old is sexually active, “the average person thinks that’s a problem. We should make sure that we don’t just leave that discussion of values or choices to the right wing, in which case they are able to feed on people’s general notions to . . . mobilize a political constituency for themselves.” He concluded by warning that when progressives oppose abstinence programs, “we get painted into a corner as if we are pro–irresponsible sexuality, pro–teenage pregnancy, and so forth. I think that’s always a difficulty.”

  At JCAR’s monthly meeting, Barack challenged a Department of Human Services (DHS) rule change that he believed would harm thirteen families receiving public assistance. DHS’s representative said they would happily discuss the details with Barack, who alone among his colleagues voted against the new rule. An effort like that drew no attention, but Barack’s campaign staff tried to put him in the public eye. “We had this free cable TV strategy,” Dan Shomon explained, to “get Barack on every possible free cable TV” public access program, of which several were aimed at African Americans. On one, with host Joe Green, Barack explained at some length his rationale for challenging Bobby Rush. In Congress, he, unlike Rush, would provide three types of leadership. First, “leadership at the national as well as local levels in terms of framing the debate and setting an agenda, a specific agenda that people can see, that’s clearly articulated.” Second, he would offer “leadership in organizing resources in the community.” And third, “we should expect out of our political leadership some moral leadership. I think that we need to talk about some of the attitudinal changes that we need to undergo within our comm
unities,” including the need to “embrace a notion that academic excellence is important.”

  Rush’s campaign finally got going, and he attacked the Chicago Housing Authority’s plan to tear down its infamous high-rises, while Barack was implicitly supportive. “A long-term strategy that involves the creation of mixed-income communities is preferable to the status quo,” Barack told the Hyde Park Herald, but he knew it would “require a solid commitment from every level of government.” The Rush campaign also castigated Barack for holding his announcement ceremony downtown rather than in the district. State representative Lou Jones, who had loathed Barack since their Alice Palmer face-off, proclaimed that Barack “did not know, understand, value or respect the people nor the institutions within the district enough to locate an announcement site among the constituents he says he wants to represent.” Barack’s campaign responded that “you always start your campaign where you can get the most and best press coverage,” and one bimonthly black newspaper commented that Barack “made a good impression at his announcement” and “has been having a strong presence at community events.” The South Street Journal added that some “still question his loyalty to the black community” because “Obama did not support Rush in the mayoral race” against Richard Daley, but it quoted Aldermen Leslie Hairston and Ted Thomas as praising Barack’s record in Springfield.2

  By mid-October both campaigns scheduled professional polls to see where the race stood with voters, but on October 18 the race took a sudden and tragic turn. At 8:30 P.M., two gunmen pretending to be undercover cops shot and badly wounded twenty-nine-year-old Huey Rich, Rush’s out-of-wedlock son who bore his mother’s surname and had been raised by his grandmother, a member of Trinity Church. Rich suffered massive blood loss, lost consciousness, and underwent hours of surgery. Chicago newspapers gave the shooting front-page coverage as Rich remained in critical condition for more than seventy-two hours. The young man’s kidneys, lungs, and heart were all failing, and the attending physician told Rev. Jeremiah Wright “there is no brain activity.” Wright told Rush that Huey was brain dead, and he died without ever regaining consciousness. Newspapers gave front-page headlines to the death, and Rush, speaking at Jesse Jackson’s weekly Rainbow/PUSH rally, declared that “we’ve got to rid our communities of guns . . . guns don’t belong in a civilized society.”