David Axelrod

David Axelrod
Axelrod in the Oval Office. (2009)
Senior Advisor to the President
In office January 20, 2009 – January 10, 2011
President	Barack Obama
Preceded by	Barry Jackson
Succeeded by	David Plouffe
Born	February 22, 1955 (age 56) Lower East Side, New York, United States
Political party	Democratic Party
Spouse(s)	Susan Landau
Children	Lauren Michael Ethan
Alma mater	University of Chicago
Religion	Judaism

David M. Axelrod (born February 22, 1955) is an American political consultant based in Chicago, Illinois. He is best known as the top political advisor to President Barack Obama, first in Obama's 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate in Illinois and later as chief strategist for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Following the 2008 election, he was appointed as Senior Advisor to Obama.^[1]

Axelrod is the founder of AKP&D Message and Media, was a political writer for the Chicago Tribune, and operated ASK Public Strategies, now called ASGK Public Strategies. He is also a supporter of Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool, who helped Axelrod begin his firm (under the name Axelrod and Associates).

Early life

Born in New York's Lower East Side, Axelrod grew up in a middle class Jewish-American household, attended the prestigious Stuyvesant High School and showed a passion for politics early on.^[2] Axelrod grew up in Stuyvesant Town on the east side of Manhattan.^[3][4]

Career

At the age of 27, Axelrod became the City Hall Bureau Chief and a political columnist for the Chicago Tribune. He worked at the Tribune for eight years, covering national, state and local politics, and became the youngest political writer there in 1981.^[5] Unhappy with his prospects at the Tribune, in 1984 he joined the campaign of U.S. Senator Paul Simon as communications director; within weeks he was promoted to co-campaign manager.^[6]

In 1985, Axelrod formed a political consultancy company, Axelrod & Associates. In 1987 he worked on the successful reelection campaign of Harold Washington, Chicago's first black mayor, while also helping to spearhead Simon's campaign for the 1988 Democratic Presidential nomination. This established his first experience in working with black politicians and he later became a key player in similar mayoral campaigns of blacks, including Dennis Archer in Detroit, Michael R. White in Cleveland, Anthony A. Williams in Washington, D.C., Lee P. Brown in Houston, and John F. Street in Philadelphia.^[2] Axelrod is a longtime strategist for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley^[7] and styles himself a "specialist in urban politics." The Economist notes he also specializes in "packaging black candidates for white voters".^[7]

In January 1990, Axelrod was hired to be the media consultant for the all but official re-election campaign of Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt.^[8] However, Goldschmidt announced in February that he would not seek re-election.^[9]

In 2002, Axelrod was retained by the Liberal Party of Ontario to help Dalton McGuinty and his party to be elected into government in the October 2003 election. Axelrod's effect on Ontario was heard through the winning Liberal appeal to "working families" and placing an emphasis on positive policy contrasts like canceling corporate tax breaks to fund education and health.^[10]

In 2004, Axelrod worked for John Edwards' presidential campaign. During the campaign, he lost responsibility for making ads, but continued as the campaign's spokesman. Regarding Edwards' failed 2004 presidential campaign, Axelrod has commented, "I have a whole lot of respect for John, but at some point the candidate has to close the deal and — I can’t tell you why — that never happened with John."^[11][12]

In 2006, Axelrod consulted for several campaigns, including the successful campaigns of Eliot Spitzer in New York's gubernatorial election and Deval Patrick in Massachusetts's gubernatorial election. Axelrod also served in 2006 as the chief political adviser for Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair U.S. Representative Rahm Emanuel for the U.S. House of Representatives elections, in which the Democrats gained 31 seats.

Until recently, Axelrod also worked as an Adjunct Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, where he, along with Professor Peter Miller, taught an undergraduate class titled Campaign Strategy, a class that analyzed political campaigns, the strategies used by them, and the effectiveness of those strategies.^[13]

On June 14, 2009 Axelrod received an honorary "Doctor of Humane Letters" degree from DePaul University, speaking at the commencement exercises of the College of Communication and College of Computing and Digital Media.^[14]

Barack Obama presidential campaign

Axelrod's ties with Obama reach back more than a decade. Axelrod met Obama in 1992 when Obama so impressed Betty Lou Saltzmann, a woman from Chicago's "lakefront liberal crowd," during a black voter registration drive he ran that she then introduced the two. Obama also consulted Axelrod before he delivered his famed 2002 anti-war speech^[15] and asked him to read drafts of his book, The Audacity of Hope.^[16]

Axelrod served as the chief strategist and media advisor for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Axelrod contemplated taking a break from the 2008 presidential campaign, as five of the candidates —Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, Christopher Dodd, and Tom Vilsack — were past clients. Personal ties between Axelrod and Hillary Clinton also made it difficult, as she had done significant work on behalf of epilepsy causes for a foundation co-founded by Axelrod's wife and mother, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE) (Axelrod's daughter suffers from developmental disabilities associated with chronic epileptic seizures.) Axelrod's wife even said that a 1999 conference Clinton convened to find a cure for the condition was "one of the most important things anyone has done for epilepsy."^[17]

Axelrod ultimately decided to participate in the Obama campaign. He told The Washington Post, "I thought that if I could help Barack Obama get to Washington, then I would have accomplished something great in my life."^[18]

Axelrod contributed to the initial announcement of Obama's campaign by creating a five-minute Internet video released January 16, 2007.^[19][20] He continued to use 'man on the street' style biographical videos to create intimacy and authenticity in the political ads.

While the Clinton campaign chose an incumbent strategy that emphasized experience, Axelrod helped to craft the Obama campaign's main theme of "change." Axelrod criticized the Clinton campaign's positioning by saying that "being the consummate Washington insider is not where you want to be in a year when people want change...[Clinton's] initial strategic positioning was wrong and kind of played into our hands."^[21] The change message played a factor in Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses. "Just over half of [Iowa's] Democratic caucus-goers said change was the No. 1 factor they were looking for in a candidate, and 51 percent of those voters chose Barack Obama," said CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider. "That compares to only 19 percent of 'change' caucus-goers who preferred Clinton."^[22] Axelrod also believed that the Clinton campaign underestimated the importance of the caucus states. "For all the talent and the money they had over there," says Axelrod, "they — bewilderingly — seemed to have little understanding for the caucuses and how important they would become."^[22] In the 2008 primary season, Obama won a majority of the states that use the caucus format.

Axelrod is credited with implementing a strategy that encourages the participation of people, a lesson drawn partly from Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign as well as a personal goal of Barack Obama. Axelrod explained to Rolling Stone, "When we started this race, Barack told us that he wanted the campaign to be a vehicle for involving people and giving them a stake in the kind of organizing he believed in. According to Axelrod getting volunteers involved became the legacy of the campaign "^[23] This includes drawing on "Web 2.0" technology and viral media to support a grassroots strategy. Obama's web platform allows supporters to blog, create their own personal page, and even phonebank from home. Axelrod's elaborate use of the Internet has helped Obama to organize under-30 voters and build over 475,000 donors in 2007, most of whom were Internet donors contributing less than $100 each.^[24] The Obama strategy stood in contrast to Hillary Clinton's campaign, which benefited from high name recognition, large donors and strong support among established Democratic leaders.

The Politico described Axelrod as 'soft-spoken' and 'mild-mannered'^[25] and it quoted one Obama aide in Chicago as saying, "Do you know how lucky we are that he is our Mark Penn?"^[26] Democratic consultant and former colleague Dan Fee said of Axelrod, "He's a calming presence."^[27] "He's not a screamer, like some of these guys," political advisor Bill Daley said of Axelrod in the Chicago Tribune. "He has a good sense of humor, so he's able to defuse things."^[6]

Senior Advisor to the President

On November 20, 2008, Obama named Axelrod as a Senior Advisor to his administration. His role includes crafting policy and communicating the President's message in coordination with President Obama, the Obama Administration, speechwriters, and the White House communications team.

On April 15, 2009, Jim Messina and Jon Selib, chief of staff to Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, convened a meeting at the headquarters of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) with leaders of organized labor and health care groups, including PhRMA. At the meeting, the groups decided to form two nonprofit entities to promote reform efforts, Healthy Economy Now and Americans for Stable Quality Care, that would be almost entirely funded by PhRMA. The two groups spent $24 million on their advertising campaigns; the contract to produce and place ads went to White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod's former firm, AKPD, which owed Axelrod $2 million.^[28]

David Axelrod left his White House senior advisor post on January 28, 2011.

References

External links

• AKPD Media
• ASGK Public Strategies
• David Axelrod at WhoRunsGov at The Washington Post
• Appearances on C-SPAN
• David Axelrod on Charlie Rose
• David Axelrod collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Works by or about David Axelrod in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• The Agony and The Agony, Patrick T. Reardon, Chicago Tribune, June 24, 2007
• Profile: David Axelrod, Ned Temko, The Guardian, July 27, 2008
• Long by Obama’s Side, an Adviser Fills a Role That Exceeds His Title, Jefff Zeleny, The New York Times, October 26, 2008
• President’s Political Protector Is Ever Close at Hand, Jeff Zeleny, The New York Times, March 8, 2009

Political offices
Preceded by Barry Jackson	Senior Advisor to the President 2009–2011 Served alongside: Pete Rouse, Valerie Jarrett	Succeeded by David Plouffe