by David Garrow
It was not surprising, then, that Philip’s closest political partnership was sometimes with the utterly nonideological House Speaker, Mike Madigan. Famous throughout Illinois politics as a man of few words who rarely volunteered his thoughts, Madigan was known as someone whose word was reliable once he finally gave it. Philip and Edgar both remembered Madigan positively, but Emil Jones was the odd man out in Madigan’s good working relationship with the two top Republicans. When the Speaker came to the Senate floor to see Philip, members and staffers took note of how Madigan ignored Jones just as Philip did. Jones understandably resented that lack of respect, creating a long-term rift. Donne Trotter recalled that Jones used to acerbically joke that House Democrats carried “a chip in their head” implanted by the Speaker, “and all Madigan had to do was push a button.” The Senate’s “lack of respect for House members . . . was in a lot of cases perpetuated by our own leader because he didn’t have a real good working relationship with Mike Madigan,” Trotter explained. The lack of comity within their chamber and their party left Senate Democrats marginalized in more ways than one.28
Four weeks passed between the January 8 swearing-in ceremony and the commencement of legislative business on February 5. On the second weekend in January, Barack held a “community swearing-in” at Kennedy-King College in the Englewood part of his district. He told a weekly newspaper reporter he intended to put “principles before self-interest” in Springfield and that his two top priorities were improving education in Chicago’s public schools and job training programs. “We can’t just wait on legislation to cause some of the changes,” he said. “I’m hoping to participate as part of a broad leadership with political officials, community organizations and ordinary folks to change some of the values that are blocking us from achieving the way we may achieve. Though we may be lobbying for more school funding, it’s also important for us to bring education into the homes and ensure parents are checking children’s homework, turning off the television, teaching common courtesy and how not to throw trash out windows.” Barack said older legislators had advised him to “be quiet and start slow,” but he believed that “if you work harder than others, you can still move legislation. I’m going to be the hardest working Senator down in Springfield.”
In his annual State of the State address on January 22, Governor Jim Edgar renewed his call for education funding reform and called for expanded campaign contribution disclosures. One week later, the Joyce Foundation–funded Illinois Campaign Finance Project released a two-year study, largely written by Kent Redfield, which aimed “to elevate campaign finance reform onto the legislative agenda.” The group’s marquee members, cochaired by retiring U.S. senator Paul Simon and former governor William Stratton, also included Barack’s Joyce Foundation board colleague Paula Wolff and his longtime proponent and former Harold Washington aide Jacky Grimshaw. The group declared that contrary to what Illinois law still allowed, “campaign funds should be used exclusively for campaign purposes, and not for personal use . . . officials should not be allowed to take campaign contributions with them for personal use after they leave office,” and legislators should be prohibited from holding fund-raisers in the Springfield area while the legislature was in session. They stressed that the power of the Four Tops was the crux of the problem: “there is intense pressure to contribute to the leaders, and failure to do so is perceived by many players as a grave mistake,” since “not giving money places individuals and groups at a distinct disadvantage.”
On the first three days of substantive Senate business, February 5 through 7, Barack introduced seventeen different bills. They addressed the redevelopment of blighted areas, fairer credit reporting, better computer technology in public schools, additional job training programs, and the creation of a state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) equal to 20 percent of a taxpayer’s federal EITC. One called for an additional $50 million for minority business enterprise loans, three dealt with different aspects of welfare reform, and another authorized community colleges to distribute a directory of their graduating students to potential employers. Only three of the seventeen would receive committee consideration in the weeks ahead, but this certainly attested to Barack’s claim to be the “hardest working Senator.”
So too did remarks Barack offered at a legislative conference convened by AFSCME, the large public employees union. AFSCME lobbyists Ray Harris and Bill Perkins had met Barack in 1992 during Project VOTE!, and at an opening workshop, Harris stressed to new legislators how leadership-dominated the statehouse really was. Barack said that had not been part of the formal orientation, and Perkins remembered being blown away by Barack’s lunchtime remarks that elected officials like himself ideally should be answerable to an organized base of voters. Another labor lobbyist, Dan Burkhalter of the Illinois Education Association, one of the state’s two major teachers’ unions, had dinner with Barack one evening to apologize for how the IEA had ignored him when it seemed Barack would be facing Alice Palmer in an actual primary. “He’s nobody’s guy,” Burkhalter said, invoking a famous old Chicago political saying—“We don’t want nobody nobody sent”—so Barack “was a hard guy to figure out.” But Barack forthrightly explained his attitude toward the teachers’ unions: “Dan, here’s the deal. I’ll be with you guys. I can be your guy. I’ll vote for tax increases, I’ll vote for more money for schools, but here’s the thing: we’ve got to figure out how to get bad teachers out of the classroom. You guys should be a part of that instead of blocking it, and if you’ll work with me to be a part of it, I’m with you. If you won’t, I’m not.”
During that first week, Barack also went to Emil Jones Jr. to volunteer for whatever Jones could give him. “You know me,” Barack said, alluding to their acquaintance a decade earlier in Roseland. “‘You know I like to work hard, so feel free to give me any tough assignments,’” Jones recounted. “I suggested to him that to be successful in this body, you get to know the members, especially those who are not from Chicago,” particularly those from downstate Illinois. “Get to know them well” and “Don’t hang around with the guys from Chicago. . . . It’ll serve you well in this body, and you’ll be able to get more things accomplished.”
In addition, that week Barack called Judd Miner in Chicago. Both men expected Barack to shift to some part-time role with the firm, but still receiving a regular salary. Allison Davis was transitioning from being a partner in the firm he had cofounded to full-time housing development work in conjunction with Tony Rezko’s Rezmar Corp., and by February 1997 both Barack’s and Allison’s status at the newly named Miner, Barnhill & Galland changed to “Of Counsel,” a common law firm title. “We were going to set him up in Springfield,” Judd recalled, but Barack quickly realized that would be impossible. “Judd, this is unfair to you guys. It’s full-time,” so “I don’t want to take a draw,” Barack explained. “I’m going to be putting in a lot more time than I thought,” so “I prefer not to be salaried.” George Galland remembered being impressed by how “unusually straightforward” Barack was about the situation, and going forward Barack would be paid only when he could devote time to actual casework.
In early February, Barack summed up his first month’s impressions of Springfield in a column for the weekly Hyde Park Herald, just as Alice Palmer had during her term. Remarking that he was “somewhat awed by the challenges that lie ahead,” Barack confessed that “friends and associates have (only half jokingly) questioned my sanity in entering politics, and warned me of all the corrupting influences lurking in Springfield.” But he had run because of “my desire to restore a sense of mission and service to state government,” something he believed Illinois’s governor lacked. Jim Edgar, he wrote, is “a pleasant enough man who appears incapable of mustering the kind of energy and vision needed to mobilize support around” substantive issues. “But perhaps the biggest impediment to change in Springfield is the lack of meaningful engagement in the process among ordinary citizens, and particularly those persons most vulnerable to gover
nment action—or inaction.”
The legislature’s most “daunting task,” Barack wrote, would be coping with the state-level changes required by federal welfare reform. Barack cited the multiple bills he had introduced to “significantly increase and revamp the state’s job training and retention services targeted towards unskilled workers” plus support services to help people transition from welfare to work. “It’s people power that lifts up issues and frames the debate in new ways,” and so he was “organizing citizens’ committees” to address “education, economic development, health care, and public safety” issues. “I am extremely humble about what I can accomplish working alone. But I am supremely confident of what we can accomplish together, and look forward to serving you in the years to come.”29
Barack’s organizing experience clearly informed his view of elective office, and it also directly influenced a presentation he delivered on a mid-February Friday morning to Chicago’s Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a well-funded, fifteen-year-old community development organization whose roots lay in a national Ford Foundation effort to revitalize distressed neighborhoods. LISC had created a “Futures Committee” to reshape its ongoing efforts, and several leading members, including Aurie Pennick from the MacArthur Foundation and Howard Stanback, formerly one of Harold Washington’s top aides, had known Barack a decade earlier.
Barack shaped his remarks around what he called “eight principles of healthy communities,” beginning with “a sound economic base” that offered living-wage jobs and opportunities for advancement. Continuing to echo John McKnight’s teachings, his second principle was the need to “organize around production, not consumption.” Then came “primacy of the family,” inclusively defined, the “central importance of education,” an “accessible and transparent public square,” emphasizing commonality, “inclusive civic associations and political structures,” strong “mediating institutions” such as churches and unions, and lastly a “shared mentality” that values the past while embracing the future. “We must recognize the major tensions that exist in all communities,” Barack conceded, but “a healthy community combines a recognition of individuality with a well-defined public sensibility, and emphasizes both personal and collective responsibility.” Eight months later, when LISC Chicago ratified its “Futures Committee” findings in a paper entitled “Changing the Way We Do Things,” it credited Barack’s “incisive observations” as a decisive influence on LISC’s conclusions.
Similarly, the Rockefeller Foundation had created a Next Generation Network Program with a half-million dollars a year allotted to “create a corps of 21st-century American leaders with a sense of common purpose and the capability required to build a society committed to fairness and democratic principles, and with the confidence and skills to bring together others in pursuit of those goals.” Barack’s name came to their attention, and Barack asked Newton Minow at Sidley & Austin to write a recommendation letter. Minow told Rockefeller that Barack “is one of the truly outstanding young men of his generation,” as demonstrated by his achievements at Harvard, his authorship of Dreams From My Father, and his chairing of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge’s board. Minow humorously noted his disappointment that neither Barack nor Michelle had remained at Sidley, but he emphasized that the state Senate was just the start of Barack’s public service career. “This is only the beginning for him because I believe one day he will be either Mayor of our City or Governor of our State or a United States Senator. He is going to the top.”
Barack’s district aide, Cynthia Miller, recalled reading Minow’s letter before forwarding it to New York. Rockefeller failed to select Barack, but Cynthia knew Barack’s aspirations reached at least as high as Minow’s trio of predictions. So did his sister-in-law Janis Robinson, who now was raising two young children while working as the part-time executive director of ABLE, the Alliance of Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs, a small Chicago black executives’ group. She and Craig lived within a block of Barack and Michelle, and by 1997 “Michelle and I were very close,” Janis recalled. Once Barack was in the state Senate, “Michelle told me at one point that he definitely felt that he could be president,” Janis recounted. Michelle had said that Barack “has pretty lofty aspirations,” and when Janis asked, “Like what?” Michelle answered frankly: “Like president.”
Barack was selected for a somewhat less august program than Rockefeller’s, a Harvard “social capital” discussion symposium called the Saguaro Seminar that also included law professor Martha Minow and Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne. Barack’s Annenberg involvement continued, even though he often had to participate by phone from Springfield. At one point, Annenberg’s efforts were publicly attacked by old ally Patrick Keleher, who after years of intense commitment to Chicago school reform concluded that such efforts were benefiting the reformers more than students. “A decade of waste—waste of public and private resources” had channeled hundreds of thousands of dollars to reform groups, while parents had been left “marginalized and largely voiceless,” Keleher argued. “Very little really happens from one wave of Chicago school reform to the next,” yet “reformers will fight to the death against giving direct financial control of education to parents” by way of vouchers. In a Sun-Times op-ed, Keleher castigated Annenberg’s role, and the Sun-Times devoted two news stories to how “School Reform Pioneer Decries ‘Lost Decade.’”30
Barack’s principal focus remained the state Senate, and by early March the pace of legislative business picked up appreciably. Judiciary Committee chairman Carl Hawkinson, a 1973 Harvard Law School graduate who had made Law Review, was “immediately impressed” when he learned Barack had been president of the Review. Fellow Republican Frank Watson remembered standing with Hawkinson on the Senate floor when Barack came up to introduce himself, saying he understood Watson was interested in education. “I’m Barack Obama, and I want to do good things for kids.” Watson replied that he would be happy to work together, then expressed amazement once Barack stepped away. “Can you believe that?” Watson remarked about Barack’s brimming self-confidence. “That was kind of unique. I’d been around a long time, and that had never happened to me before.”
Appropriations chairman Steve Rauschenberger, one of the so-called Fab Five group of reform-minded young Republicans who had entered the Senate together four years earlier, was very intrigued with Barack. “When he first arrived, I thought he was exceptional. He was an intellectual Democrat of color who would engage on public policy.” Deno Perdiou, Jim Edgar’s Senate lobbyist, gave the governor a similar report: “There’s a really bright new African American senator from Chicago who’s really good,” Edgar remembered being told. Walter Dudycz, Chicago’s only Republican senator and a veteran police detective, found Barack “very personable and pleasant,” and North Side Democrat Howard Carroll thought Barack was “very impressive.” In identical language, both men also saw that he was “very bright.” Far downstate Democrat Evelyn Bowles “liked him right off the spot,” but both of Chicago’s progressive Hispanic senators, Miguel del Valle and Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, thought Barack got a decidedly cool reception from a number of Democrats because of both his University of Chicago affiliation and also because of how he had taken out the much-loved Alice Palmer. On the Senate floor, Barack remained quiet well into March, impressing del Valle as “cautious and careful and very thoughtful.” But in Senate Democrats’ private caucuses, he spoke up from the outset, often invoking his legal expertise. “He always had something to say,” Debbie Halvorson remembered, and older members found Barack’s professorial statements a bit much for a newcomer. Southwest Side senator Bobby Molaro, one of the legislature’s funniest and most outspoken members, never hesitated to put the overly talkative freshman in his place. “‘Barack, shut the fuck up and sit down, you son of a bitch! Who wants to hear from you?’ That would happen a lot,” Molaro smilingly remembered.
Barack’s biggest concern was less his colleagues’ reactions than his huge disa
ppointment with the support staff. Initially, as a black Chicago Democrat in a safe seat, he was given a Chicago rather than Springfield-based communications staffer, David Wilson, but Barack quickly asked for a change, and staff director Lori Joyce Cullen gave him Jimmy Treadwell in Springfield. By the beginning of March, Barack again expressed his dissatisfaction, noting that fellow freshman Debbie Halvorson, who had won a competitive seat in the south suburbs, was being staffed by her former campaign manager, Dan Shomon, a thirty-two-year-old Georgetown graduate and former newsman whom everyone regarded as highly energetic and skillful.
Barack had already gone out for a drink with Democratic chief of staff Mike Hoffmann, making clear that “I have ambitions” beyond the Senate, Hoffmann recalled. “He talked about running statewide as a black man with a name like Obama,” but “I think he was probably sizing me up as much as anything.” Yet in the wake of being doubly disappointed, Barack phoned Hoffmann with a specific request: “‘I want Dan Shomon.’ I said, ‘No way. Shomon’s our best guy. We need him for our targeted candidates to make sure they get profile. I can’t give him to a safe senator. I just can’t afford that.’” Then, “over the course of what seemed to me a half hour’s conversation, he wore me down,” Hoffmann recounted. Barack claimed it would be “‘a light load, just a little extra,’ so I finally acquiesced, and I called Shomon.”
