Rising Star

by David Garrow

  Throughout the fall, Katrina Emmons shepherded Barack through a process he found deeply distasteful. The campaign’s office space had three rooms, but almost immediately Barack moved Katrina’s desk into his office so their desks faced each other. Barack needed an enforcer because “my incentives are not to make these calls,” he admitted. Yet “If I don’t make these calls, you don’t get paid.” But “then he would still try not to make the calls. He hated fund-raising,” Katrina explained. Barack would do “just about anything to prevent himself from having to make these calls,” and while “he tried to discipline himself to do it, he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.” Instead, Barack “would talk to me about the Iraq war,” and week after week “we talked a lot about the war. . . . I remember arguing about the war, and I remember it being a focus of his attention.” Barack also “wanted to gossip about other people” he knew, as if he felt that “I’m going to live vicariously through other people without having to do anything scandalous myself.” No matter how many hours Barack spent there, he “wasn’t terribly productive,” Katrina recalled. “He needed to make certain targets, and he wasn’t making them.”

  Old friends like Judy Byrd, Valerie Jarrett, John Rogers Jr., John Schmidt, Newton Minow, and Ab Mikva all gave the maximum $2,000 per person, as did Al Johnson, Robert Blackwell Jr., and Peter Bynoe, as well as their spouses. African American financiers Louis Holland and Quintin Primo also contributed the maximum, as did heiress Abby McCormick O’Neil and the University of Chicago Law School duo of Martha Nussbaum and Cass Sunstein. Before the end of the year, no less than $8,000 came in from Tony Rezko and his relatives and employees. Longtime supporters like Judd Miner and David Brint and their wives, plus Bettylu Saltzman and Penny Pritzker and their husbands, made significant donations too. Soon after Thanksgiving, election lawyer Michael Dorf closed down Obama for Congress 2000 and assigned the $10,500 debt it owed Barack and Michelle to Obama for Illinois (OFI), which was a “great relief” to Barack. By year’s end, more donations from friends like Paul Strauss, Linzey Jones, Les Coney, Greg Dingens and his wife, and Michelle’s friend Cindy Moelis and her husband Bob Rivkin pushed OFI’s total 2002 income to $290,000. That was modest relative to Barack’s goal of no less than $3 million to run a credible race, but with expenses to date totaling only $64,000, one silver lining was that OFI did have a robust cash balance of more than $225,000.67

  Barack told one reporter he anticipated “a fierce, closely competitive race,” and just before Thanksgiving pollster Paul Harstad sent Barack and Dan a strongly worded memo about how to pitch Barack’s U.S. Senate candidacy. “I strongly urge you to gear your message toward voters’ self-interest because . . . this election will be more about voters and less about candidates,” Harstad wrote. Barack’s “basic theme” should be “Security for Middle Class Families, Putting PEOPLE First, ‘us-versus-them,’ putting families above the special interests,” Harstad suggested. “People vote their self-interest and typically define it in terms of security.” Given Barack’s status as a state senator, it would be important to “claim more credit for actually DOING something,” and “to the extent that there might be gaps in the Obama legislative record, I urge you to start to fill those gaps,” especially concerning retirement security and health care costs. “More than almost any other near-term issue,” that latter one, Harstad advised, “has the potential to seriously threaten Republicans’ electoral success.”

  Appearing on Jeff Berkowitz’s cable television political talk show, Barack addressed at greater length than ever before his feelings about the looming military attack upon Iraq:

  I don’t think that there’s anybody who imagines that Saddam Hussein is a good guy or somebody that isn’t a threat to stability in the region as well as his own people. But I also think that us rushing headlong into a war unilaterally was a mistake and may still be a mistake, and I think that we have to give those inspections a chance. Part of what’s going to be difficult to anticipate by the time of the March 2004 primary is whether in fact the United States has invaded Iraq, whether the overthrow of Saddam is complete. If it has happened, then at that point what the debate’s really going to be about is what’s our long-term commitment there. How much is it going to cost, what does it mean for us to rebuild Iraq, how do we stabilize and make sure that this country doesn’t splinter into factions between the Shias and the Kurds and the Sunnis. There’s going to be a whole host of critical issues and I think that that’s going to be something that whoever the Democratic nominee or those who are seeking the nomination is going to have to be able to grapple with.

  Berkowitz pressed Barack on how he would have voted on the resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force had he been a U.S. senator:

  If it had come to me in an up or down vote as it came, I think I would have agreed with our senior senator Dick Durbin and voted nay, and the reason is not that I don’t think we shouldn’t have aggressive inspections. What I would have been concerned about was a carte blanche to the administration for a doctrine of preemptive strikes that I’m not sure sets a good precedent.

  Barack also told Berkowitz, “I think you do have to go to a universal health care plan.” When Berkowitz asked, “does that mean a single payer?” Barack replied that “we are probably going to have to move towards a single-payer plan of some sort, and I think a major debate is going to be how do you structure that but still retain some of the important components of competitiveness and market-based incentives that are in the existing system.”

  Barack also had to cope with two later-than-usual veto session weeks in Springfield thanks to November’s election. Tongues began wagging when Republican U.S. representative Ray LaHood publicly called for Illinois Republicans to back someone other than incumbent Republican senator Peter Fitzgerald in 2004, and Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller wrote that “Fitzgerald is realistically vulnerable” given how “he disappeared from Illinois immediately after winning his Senate seat.” The veto session was almost entirely without note, although Barack and ten other liberal Democrats voted against a death penalty reform bill that Barack called “pretty thin gruel.” Barack spoke at length before the Senate’s 46–11 vote. “I am actually not somebody who is opposed to the death penalty in every single case,” he explained, yet he cited his friend Scott Turow’s conclusion that “you can’t create an error-free system.” With “thirteen exonerations from death row in just the past few years,” everyone should “acknowledge that that’s thirteen innocent people too many to be on death row.” Looking ahead to Democratic control come 2003, “we’re going to have to do greater reforms than are presented in this bill.”

  On Wednesday evening, December 4, lame-duck Senate president Pate Philip told his Republican colleagues he would leave office before the spring session began. Three contenders—Kirk Dillard, Steve Rauschenberger, and Frank Watson—announced their candidacies for minority leader in a twenty-four-hour contest that was decided late Thursday after Rauschenbusch threw his support behind the conservative Watson. Philip’s departure, after a decade-long vise-grip hold on the Senate, signaled just how dramatic a change was about to transpire with Emil Jones Jr. ascending to the Senate presidency. Barack would get a significant office upgrade, moving from ground-floor suite 105 to the considerably more attractive, though windowless, M114, on the capitol’s mezzanine level. Assisted by expert staffer Nia Odeoti-Hassan, Barack would be chairing the Health and Human Services Committee, as he chose to rename it, and superlegislator John Cullerton would succeed the departing Carl Hawkinson as chairman of Judiciary, on which Barack would continue to serve. Illinois’s budget woes aside, a slam-bang spring session for Senate Democrats was only weeks away.68

  Thanks to Raja Krishnamoorthi and other young attorneys like Andrew Gruber, the Obama Issues Committee steamed forward in advance of the spring session. Three subcommittees focused on state spending, state revenue, and Illinois’s plethora of corporate tax breaks, all with an eye toward generating “innovative and creati
ve policy positions” so that Barack can “introduce bills related to the ideas that you come up with,” Raja and Cynthia Miller told everyone. With the Senate race looming, Barack in mid-December left the boards of both the Joyce Foundation and the Woods Fund. Barack did take time to guest-host Cliff Kelley’s popular radio show on WVON, where he addressed the political firestorm created by Senate majority leader Trent Lott’s praise for the segregationist record of Senate colleague Strom Thurmond. “The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott,” Barack told listeners. “If they have to stand for something, they have to stand up and say this is not the person we want representing our party.” Barack was hardly more charitable toward Illinois’s Peter Fitzgerald, declaring on his new but far-from-fancy ObamaForIllinois.com Web page that the Republican incumbent “has represented only narrow concerns, big business and special interests. Meanwhile, corporate and CEO scandals have widened, our health care crisis has gotten worse, and many of us are fighting to get a good-paying job.”

  But the weightiest factor in the Senate race was still what Carol Moseley Braun would do. Thanks in large part to Valerie Jarrett, Barack had a crucial behind-the-scenes voice working on his behalf. Black financier John Rogers Jr. was one of Moseley Braun’s closest friends, and given her painful 1998 loss to Fitzgerald, Rogers explained that “there was just a sense, I think, in the African American community, the business leadership community . . . that Carol should get on with a business life” rather than return to politics. “I was not eager for her to jump back into the game again,” and “I had taken Carol over to meet with Jamie Dimon,” CEO of Bank One, “to talk about, like, board seats and trying to help her network as she was getting back into Chicago life,” following her ambassadorial posting in New Zealand. “I remember vividly the conversations around could I help with Senator Braun, and try to talk with her,” Rogers recalled, and “I was doing what I had been asked to by Barack and Valerie to try to sort of feel her out and try and discourage her” from running for Senate.

  As Christmas approached, reporters had no success in getting Moseley Braun to reveal her plans. Barack’s public comments tried to nudge her toward the sidelines. “Any time you run against somebody who beat you as an incumbent, you have some challenges,” Barack remarked. “Her calculation would have to be that people’s feelings about Fitzgerald have become so negative, it changes the dynamics from six years ago.” When the Associated Press reported that Moseley Braun “said Obama told her earlier this year that if she got in the race, he would get out,” Dan Shomon pushed back hard, saying, “We don’t know what Senator Moseley-Braun is going to do, but we’re in.” Privately, Barack’s own attitude was far different, as lawyer friend Matt Piers learned when he ran into Barack at U.S. representative Jan Schakowsky’s Evanston office. Barack explained that Schakowsky had just told him that she would not run for Senate, “but I’m not going to do it if Carol Braun does.” Piers was surprised. “You’d stay out for Carol Braun?” Yes, Barack replied. “Her name recognition is through the roof, and I don’t think I could beat her.”69

  Before Barack, Michelle, and their daughters went to Hawaii to spend the holidays with Madelyn Dunham and meet Maya Soetoro’s new boyfriend Konrad Ng, Barack for the first time ever sent out Christmas cards to the statehouse press corps. One reporter teasingly gave Barack “the Pressroom Subtle Hint Award,” writing that while it was not the first time Springfield journalists had received holiday greetings from a Chicago state senator, “it was the first time during an election cycle in which Peter Fitzgerald is being challenged.” Barack had his Con Law III exams to grade, yet his incipient Senate candidacy had in no way harmed the quality of his teaching throughout the fall. His thirty-five Con Law students gave him a strong 6.0 rating on the law school’s now seven-point evaluation scale, and thirty-two of them responded “yes” when asked “Would you recommend this class to another student?” Beginning at 8:00 A.M. on Monday, January 6, Barack would again be teaching Voting Rights twice a week, despite the demands of a statewide campaign, but the Obamas’ family finances, now without Robert Blackwell Jr.’s EKI beneficence, left no other option.

  Rumors spread that Chicago city treasurer Maria Pappas would join the Senate field, but on Monday, January 6, Dan Shomon convened the first weekly conference call of all the political consultants—David Axelrod, John Kupper, and the Strategy Group’s Pete Giangreco and Terry Walsh—who would be directing campaign strategy for Obama for Illinois. “Numbers analysis” was the first topic, highlighted by how in a Democratic primary, Cook County African American voters constituted 25 to 27 percent of statewide turnout. “Update on Moseley-Braun’s status” led them to conclude that the likelihood of her entering the race was 70 to 80 percent. Per John Rogers’s efforts, “Prospective employers?” was touched upon too. An “endorsement press conference with Jesse Jr.” could help undercut Moseley Braun’s entry, but the most important upcoming date would be January 30, when all campaigns had to publicly file their 2002 fund-raising reports with the Federal Election Commission. Press coverage of those figures would go a long way toward signaling who besides millionaire Blair Hull would be a top-rank contender. John Kupper jotted down how Barack’s goal was “$500K by end of month” with “$400K in [the] bank.”

  That same morning, Rich Miller’s Capitol Fax headlined one story “Obama Picks Up Steam.” With both Jesse Jackson Jr. and his father backing Barack, some Obama “supporters believe that if he can lock up enough support early, then” Moseley Braun “might be convinced to stay out of the race—or forced out later this year if she has trouble raising money and finding support.” Wary of skeptical readers, Miller emphasized, “Don’t dismiss Obama. Yes, he has a strange, even Arabic-sounding name (it doesn’t take a genius to realize that Obama sounds a lot like Osama) at a time when that attribute is far from ideal . . . but the Harvard Law School grad is raising money and attracting lots of young activists to his campaign.”

  Later that day, Jesse Jackson Jr. issued a public statement aimed at torpedoing a run by Carol Moseley Braun, saying “it is now time for her to step aside.” Reporting Jackson’s announcement, Roll Call quoted David Axelrod as warning that “she would go into that race with very serious baggage.” Further assertions that “she would not be able to beat Fitzgerald” and that “this is a woman who literally needs a job” were not attributed to Axelrod by name, but the purpose of the one-two punch was obvious. That evening in Springfield, Barack’s state campaign committee held a “Legislative Inauguration Celebration” at one of the capital’s well-trafficked watering holes, Floyd’s Thirst Parlor. Former U.S. senator Paul Simon was among those who came to greet Barack, but in the statehouse most attention focused on how Senate president Emil Jones Jr. had promulgated new rules requiring that all amendments to pending bills be referred to the leadership-dominated Rules Committee. “Rank-and-file legislators have given up some of their rapidly disappearing autonomy for the sake of partisan retribution,” Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller observed.

  At the first possible opportunity, Barack introduced a trio of significant but unsurprising bills. One aimed to extend Illinois’s earned-income tax credit, a second would require the videotaping of all police interrogations in potential capital cases, and a third would mandate that law enforcement officers record the race or ethnicity of all drivers whom they stopped. Barack also held a press conference to tout an upcoming bill backed by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that would require Illinois hospitals to disclose all manner of statistical information, including patient infection rates. “The public has a right to know information that could affect their very ability to survive a hospital stay,” Barack declared, information that “should be available to all patients so that they can make responsible health-care choices.” Barack also told reporters that it was imperative that incoming governor Rod Blagojevich demonstrate “that he’s willing to make tough choices” regarding Illinois’s spiraling state budget deficit. “People may grumble and complain,
but I think they will respect him making those tough decisions.”70

  Forty-eight hours before leaving office, Governor George Ryan issued a blanket commutation of the death sentences of all 164 Illinois death row inmates. Ryan cited the legislature’s 2002 failure to adopt the many reforms recommended by his study commission as one reason for his breathtaking move, and Barack endorsed Ryan’s decision. “I think the governor is right that the legislature did a poor job of addressing his proposals,” but with Democrats about to take control, “there’s going to be a big incentive to carefully examine and hopefully pass some of the governor’s reform proposals.”

  Prior to Rod Blagojevich’s Monday, January 13, inauguration, the incoming chief executive “said over the weekend that if he had known how bad the deficit was he might not have run for governor,” Capitol Fax reported. Miller added that “if he really didn’t know, it was a willful ignorance,” and statehouse insiders were already worried about the tenor and composition of Blagojevich’s new administration. “Anyone who worships secrecy like Team Blago does is headed for trouble,” Miller commented. “Paranoid people don’t usually govern all that well.”

  In Chicago following the inauguration, Barack was introduced to two of the city’s wealthiest men thanks to longtime cheerleader Newt Minow. Lester Crown and his son James, one of seven siblings, presided over a family-held firm worth $4 billion, and its growth over the years since Lester’s father Henry had started a small sand and gravel business in 1919 was the most storied legacy in all of Jewish Chicago. Lester Crown, well known for his hawkish views regarding Israel, responded noncommittally upon meeting Barack, but James, who was only eight years Barack’s senior, was extremely impressed. “I pulled him down to my office, and I said, ‘Hey, look, I think you should run, and I want you to win,’” James recalled.