Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  On Sunday morning, Barack and Kevin drove two hours northwest to Rockford, for appearances at five black churches. Introducing Barack to “base vote” Democrats outside of Chicagoland was a key element in Pete Giangreco’s statewide targeting strategy, and Rockford, just like Decatur and Springfield in central Illinois and Madison and St. Clair counties down in Metro East, was a community where African American outreach was essential. Barack also took time to speak with Register Star political editor Chuck Sweeny, whose story “Obama Leaves Good Impression” told readers that “if resumes were dollars, Obama would be worth a few billion.” Revisiting his theme from two weeks earlier, Sweeny wrote that “Democratic establishment types tell me the race is between Hull and Hynes. I say if he gets enough money and troops to market himself in all Democratic strongholds, the charismatic academic from Hyde Park can win the nomination.”41

  Sweeny was not alone. Suburban Daily Herald columnist Jack Mabley complained that “opponents try to imply he is a Muslim,” but predicted that “if Illinois votes Democratic as usual next year, Barack Obama will make history.” Barack’s campaign continued to churn out almost daily policy-specific press releases, most of which continued to win prominent coverage in the Chicago Defender. One story highlighted Barack’s plan for “providing health insurance to all,” and the West Side’s Austin Weekly News offered an enthusiastic endorsement of Barack’s candidacy, complaining that “it’s perverse for black nationalists to reject the son of a Kenyan for not being black enough.” Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell asserted that Barack has “so far campaigned almost exclusively in the black community,” but more accurately added that Hynes’s union support “is not as broad and solid as had been expected.” Barack’s fund-raising remained strong, with members of Jim Crown’s extended family donating tens of thousands of dollars after meeting Barack at a December 1 reception.

  Friday, December 5, was the end of the law school’s autumn quarter. Barack’s Con Law III had attracted twenty-six students, and Racism and the Law had drawn twenty-eight. Barack had been late several times, with students willingly waiting for him, and in both courses his teacher evaluation scores held up fairly well even with the scheduling issues. In Con Law only one respondent said they would not recommend the class to others, while all but two in Racism said they would recommend it. In the race class, which included a number of left-wing students from the university’s school of social work, 3L Nathan Smith remembered that Barack “often actually took kind of the conservative position in class in response to their comments.” Barack “knew all of our names” and “was incredibly engaged as a professor.” He no longer had time to chat with students after class, but his comments led Smith to conclude that Barack believed that “legislative action is more effective than judicial action in bringing about actual results in structurally oppressed minority communities.” During the last class, Barack cited Derrick Bell’s critique of Brown v. Board of Education and Justice Clarence Thomas’s powerful 1995 opinion in Missouri v. Jenkins arguing that there was nothing necessarily inferior about all-black schools. “When you have two people on the left and the right that come together on a point of analysis so outrageously controversial, namely that Brown v. Board wasn’t the panacea that all American lawyers are required to say that it is, I would suggest for your consideration that it is a proposition worthy of thinking about,” Smith would recount Barack telling his students.

  Early Monday morning, December 8, Barack and Dan Shomon filed ten thousand petition signatures in Springfield to secure Barack’s place on the March 16 ballot. Nate Tamarin and longtime Barack ally Al Kindle had used the petition effort to begin building up the Chicago field operation they would need for the primary. That same day, in a move that attracted no attention, Barack resigned from the Senate Select Committee on Public Pension Investments to which Emil Jones had appointed him only six weeks earlier. From Springfield, Dan and Barack began a downstate swing encompassing Decatur, Edwardsville, Marion, and Rock Island.

  Late on Tuesday, sad and politically horrible news arrived: former U.S. senator Paul Simon, who earlier in the fall had told David Axelrod he would endorse Barack, had died at age seventy-five after undergoing eight hours of unsuccessful heart surgery. Axelrod had favored postponing Simon’s endorsement until early 2004, but now he was gone. A Chicago Tribune headline proclaimed “A Legacy of Honesty and Dignity,” and Barack told the Associated Press, “Paul Simon was an inspiration to every American who believes that government can be a force for good, a tool for empowering people and righting injustice.” With a Saturday visitation and a Sunday service in Carbondale, Barack altered his schedule to join a who’s who of Illinois politics plus such Washington eminences as Senator Edward M. Kennedy in honoring Simon’s life. Comparing the Senate candidates to Simon’s career, Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller wrote that “nobody stacks up, although Barack Obama has the potential to at least step into Simon’s shoes, if not actually fill them, and Steve Rauschenberger is in the ballpark.” In Carbondale, Simon’s daughter Sheila, who knew of her dad’s intent to endorse, offered her condolences to Barack: “I am so sorry this really worked out horribly for you.”42

  On December 15, the last day on which to file petitions for the March primary, Joyce Washington and Nancy Skinner submitted their signatures. Barack’s campaign was ready and waiting to take a fine-toothed comb to a copy of Washington’s submission, but the deadline for filing an objection was just seven days away: Monday, December 22, at 5:00 P.M. On Tuesday morning, it was announced that U.S. representative Jan Schakowsky would hold a press conference later that day to endorse Barack. Her husband Bob Creamer recalled that Jan’s earlier hesitancy had dissolved “once it became increasingly clear” that Barack “was putting a real good campaign together.” Evanston Democrat Larry Suffredin explained that “Jan’s endorsement of Barack was a breakthrough for him” because among North Side and North Shore progressives, Schakowsky’s support was “a big deal.”

  Barack was disappointed by the media turnout at the press conference, with the Chicago Tribune not attending. Afterward, a young journalist asked Barack to address the challenge of fund-raising “without having to prostitute yourself.” Barack conceded that “certainly I believe as you advance up the political ladder, it becomes more difficult, which is why I think ultimately we will fully recapture our democracy when we provide free airtime for candidates.” Barack reiterated his belief that “every single person should have a basic right to health care,” and in the wake of Schakowsky’s endorsement, observers like Rich Miller and Steve Neal concluded that “Obama has the momentum” among the Senate contestants.

  Inside Blair Hull’s heavily staffed, no-expense-spared campaign, the results of Mark Blumenthal and his partner Anna Bennett’s early December poll led Hull’s consultants to think much the same thing. Barack’s support among African American Democrats was now up to 29 percent, thanks to his increased name identification, and his support among liberal, college-educated Cook County white Democrats had risen to 18 percent. In the overall statewide numbers, Maria Pappas narrowly led Dan Hynes, 19 to 16 percent, with Barack and Hull trailing with 13 and 12 percent, respectively. The downstate numbers were worrisome for Hynes because over the previous ten months, his support had slipped from 37 to 23 percent as Hull’s had risen from virtually nothing to 23 percent thanks to his television advertising. As Hull’s consultants prepared for a December 9 meeting to discuss the numbers, pollsters Bennett and Blumenthal realized that “for Obama, getting to 30 percent was relatively easy.” Barack could win the race with about 35 percent if he captured 80 percent among African Americans, 50 percent of Cook County white liberals, and a smattering of white liberals elsewhere.

  Lead consultant Rick Ridder understood the challenge: “the big issue in the campaign was could we cut Barack Obama’s numbers in the black community with Bobby Rush, with cash, whatever to close to 75 percent,” rather than anything higher, so as to keep Barack at 30 percent and allow Hull to win a n
arrow plurality. Mark Blumenthal thought the hurdle was insurmountable because “there was no scenario that I could get Hull over 30 percent.” The realization that “I just didn’t see how we could win this” led Blumenthal to wonder about the propriety of going forward. “People were getting paid a lot,” and when Mark raised the question with his partner, Anna’s response was “It’s not our job to talk him out of running. It’s our job to help him win. If he wants to run, it’s our job to help him.” Bobby Rush and his brother Marlon attended the December 9 conclave, and with the congressman insisting that Barack could not win more than 60 percent of the African American vote, Hull’s consultants agreed to push forward.43

  The next Saturday, the top African American women on Barack’s campaign, Audra Wilson and Pam Smith, convened two focus group discussions at Malcolm X College on the West Side. Pam moderated the first group, composed of eight black women, asking them what they knew about the Democratic Senate candidates. One of two female pastors in the group immediately said Barack “is a member of Trinity Church, Pastor Jeremiah Wright, and he lets his biblical teaching inform his politics.” The second clergywoman noted that “Obama has experience” thanks to “all these bills that he has passed, and he worked with the devil himself, Pate Philip, and got some legislation passed.” She had been at the PUSH rally and had watched as Barack dealt with the young men trying to disrupt it. “Obama said, ‘Have your piece.’ Man, this brother is smooth. I liked the way he handled them. . . . He knows what the concerns of the people are. I see young white kids and older white people working for this young man, and they respect him. I think he has a sense of fairness about him. He is concerned about employment.”

  An older woman said she would vote for Barack. “The name kind of struck me, but when I found out that his dad was African,” that explained it. “He kind of reminds me of Martin Luther King” in “his fairness, his calmness.” A second lady agreed. “He does have good spirit. He is friendly and warm. He is not flirtatious. He is a young man full of wisdom, but he is settled. I think he genuinely cares for all people. . . . He has something about him that makes everyone around him want to help him. And he tells you that his name means ‘blessed by the Lord,’ and that is the way he acts. I mean, this brother has his act together.” A third woman said she had attended a small fund-raiser and had witnessed “this conversation he had with his daughter and her little friend” after “one was running around and one got mad at the other one. And the mother was there too, but he took the lead, and I said, ‘Let me check out his negotiating skills. If he could negotiate with these two kids, then he could go to Capitol Hill.’ . . . So I was just watching him negotiate with these two little girls, and that sold me. I could tell a relationship was there.”

  Then Pam read a brief summary of Barack’s biography and top issues to the group and asked what appealed. “Civil rights attorney,” one woman responded. “That really stood out to me.” “Health care for all children,” said a second. A third lady agreed: “Health care. When I think of health care, I think that should be available to everyone.” One of the pastors said “what stands out to me with Obama is the fact that he is a law professor, and that he is biracial. Because to me, it would take something like that for him to advance, even after he gets into the Senate, to maybe run for president.” She explained that “the fact that he is biracial should let them know that he understands both cultures, and that he is a law professor, so he is certainly intelligent enough to do the job. . . . And the fact that he passed legislation for racial profiling lets his own people know that he is really aware of things.” Pam asked about Barack’s Kenyan heritage, and several women in succession said, “I love it.” “This man has a global vision,” one explained. “If your parent is from another country . . . your view is larger than the United States.”

  Audra Wilson moderated the second group, of eleven black men. One said Barack is “very articulate, very neat looking,” with “a good clean reputation.” While “driving through a white neighborhood” he had seen some Obama yard signs, and “I searched the Web,” and “I found that he’s a very active and effective political leader.” A second man was impressed by Barack’s work to expand job opportunities for ex-offenders because “the record keeps most people unemployed when they come back to the community.” A third said, “here’s a guy who is Harvard educated,” who “has all this education and is trying to do something for the community. That’s a positive.” Another volunteered that “considering all that he has done in the community, I think it’s cool that he has a white woman for a wife.” Others quickly corrected him, saying mother, not wife, and Audra noted “lots of laughter—group is happy his wife is black.” The one fellow explained, “I thought his wife was white, and I said, ‘Wow, he has a white trophy, and he’s still out doing all this in the community.’” Another man noted that Barack had been “consistently in and out of issues in the Defender,” and the group also compared notes about what benefits Bobby Rush may have received in exchange for backing Blair Hull.

  Those two discussions went a long way toward indicating that Barack’s base was indeed solidifying, but Jim Cauley still had his campaign workers examine Joyce Washington’s petition signatures to see if she, like Alice Palmer, might have submitted too few valid ones to make the March 16 ballot. On Sunday evening, December 21, the Obama team convened for a two-hour conference call, and election lawyer Michael Dorf, who had reviewed the findings, told the group that an objection had a 50–50 chance of success. “What the hell does that mean?” Jim Cauley asked. Under pressure, Dorf increased the odds to 55–45, but he said he was not certain that “this was a winning challenge.” Almost everyone on the call spoke in favor of filing. Given their goal of winning with a 33 to 35 percent plurality, Washington might attract just enough black voters to deny Barack the margin he needed. As Cauley argued, “if she clips off three points, you can’t get there,” but David Axelrod was concerned that targeting Washington “might really crash our brand.” Barack felt similarly, asking, “How would it look? Will I get flak?” Everyone appreciated Barack’s “history with Alice Palmer,” which Audra Wilson thought “so haunted him,” and Dorf understood that “the worst thing was you challenging a black woman and you lose.” Barack sided with Axelrod. “Yeah, I don’t want to do this,” but Barack agreed to sleep on it until the next day. So as to keep their options open until the last minute, Dorf on Monday was “standing in the lobby of the Board of Elections at five to five with two suitcases” and “my cell phone . . . waiting for Nate Tamarin to tell me ‘Go file it’ or ‘Don’t file it,’” Dorf recalled. But Barack did not change his mind. “We’re not going to do that,” and Nate’s 4:55 P.M. call to Dorf was brief: “Go back downstairs.”44

  As the Christmas holidays approached, the big news was the federal criminal indictment of former governor George Ryan in the bribes-for-licenses scandal from his time as secretary of state. Barack, Michelle, and their two daughters were leaving for Honolulu on December 23, but when Jim Cauley first found out about that plan, “I went ass stomping in there . . . ready to chew his ass” and “a big fight” ensued. Jimmy knew about Barack’s missed vote on the 1999 gun bill but did not realize that Christmas in Hawaii was an annual pilgrimage. Jimmy wanted as large a fund-raising total as possible when the FEC quarterly reporting closed on December 31, and his candidate was about to take a week off. “Jim, my sister’s getting married” and her father was deceased, Barack explained. Maya and Konrad Ng were indeed having a wedding ceremony on December 28 at Oahu’s Paliku Gardens, but they had already legally wed eleven months earlier in Las Vegas. Jimmy told Barack, “Fuck you!” and walked out. “What pissed me off was his fuck-you attitude about it,” Cauley explained.

  In Honolulu, Maya was teaching at the U of H’s Educational Laboratory School and working toward a Ph.D. in education. At the ceremony, Barack gave a “poetic introductory speech” that his father’s old friend Congressman Neil Abercrombie found “mesmerizing.” Konrad and Maya
read love letters to each other and exchanged rings, after which everyone shared a potluck meal.

  On December 31 Barack and his family flew back to Chicago. His consultants had been busy projecting that with $1,750,000 cash on hand, and hopes for raising another $1,500,000, the campaign could afford three to four weeks of Chicago TV ads right before the primary. Jesse Jackson Jr. joined Barack at the opening of a south suburban Obama campaign office, and the next morning Barack was on V103, Chicago’s top R&B radio station, for a “Battle of the Best” face-off against DJ Herb Kent. Choosing the Ohio Players, his favorite group during his youth, Barack came out on top. Barack’s campaign schedule had him at Chicago L stations some mornings from 7:00 to 8:00 A.M., with weekend evenings at South Side nightspots like the Sandpiper Lounge and Sunday mornings in multiple black churches. A downstate strategy memo laid out a three-point game plan: capturing 70 to 75 percent of the African American vote outside Chicago by mounting a serious campaign effort in Metro East’s Madison and St. Clair counties, pursuing support in conservative white areas where Barack enjoyed the backing of popular local politicians such as Lane Evans and state senators Denny Jacobs and Bill Haine, and mobilizing youthful supporters in university communities like Champaign, DeKalb, Carbondale, and Macomb.