Rising Star

by David J. Garrow

  On Wednesday night, January 15, John Rogers’s phone rang. “I’m not running for the Senate,” Carol Moseley Braun told her old friend. “Great!” Rogers responded. “Then she said, ‘I’m running for president.’” Rogers was perplexed. “What are you talking about?” Just before calling Rogers, Moseley Braun had telephoned Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe to tell him to include her in the lineup for an upcoming Democratic presidential candidates’ debate. Moseley Braun later explained that the stimulus for her utterly unexpected decision was a conversation with her ten-year-old niece, who had a social studies text in hand when remarking, “Auntie Carol, all the presidents are boys.” Moseley Braun reassuringly replied that “Girls can be president too,” but then doubted the truth of her statement. “I was shaken to my core,” Carol explained, and her brother asked, “‘What’s up?’ ‘I just told Claire a whopping lie,’” Carol responded, to which her brother asked, “What are you going to do about it?”

  As Moseley Braun remembered it, she never had any intention of trying to return to the U.S. Senate because her one term there had been “the worst experience of my life,” and “it wasn’t something I wanted to do” over. Her presidential prospects were beyond long shot, but as soon as John Rogers got off the phone with her, he immediately called Valerie Jarrett with the good news. Valerie in turn phoned Barack, and within less than twenty-four hours, Barack’s now five-member campaign staff—with young African American former Senate staffer Randon Gardley having just joined Dan, Cynthia, Claire, and Katrina—began organizing an announcement event for five days later at the Hotel Allegro, in the downtown Loop. The Senate would not be in session on Tuesday, January 21, but Shomon was apologetic for the very short notice when he called Quad Cities senator Denny Jacobs. “I don’t care where it is, I don’t care when it is, I’m there,” Denny told Dan. Terry Link and Larry Walsh responded with similar enthusiasm as Barack’s campaign staff worked to draw as many well-known supporters as possible to the 11:00 A.M. event.

  By the end of the afternoon on Thursday, January 16, the word was official, and Carol Moseley Braun told the Chicago Defender, “I am not running for the Senate.” Responding to reporters the next day, Barack said “we weren’t planning to drop out immediately” had Moseley Braun announced her candidacy. “We were going to see if we could possibly continue. But realistically, it would have been very tough to stay in against her.” Barack explained he had intended to delay any formal declaration of candidacy for another six weeks, but Moseley Braun’s heartening move prompted the earlier event. In the Chicago Tribune, columnist Eric Zorn praised Barack as the Democrats’ “most impressive officeholder” and “the class of the field.” In the Chicago Sun-Times, African American columnist Laura Washington wrote that Barack’s “laid-back charm can be alluring” while noting the congressional race claims that Barack was “not black enough” and warning that his “weakest appeal is to the working class.” The local Hyde Park Herald reported that Barack’s fund-raising had now topped $400,000 and cited how “his squeaky clean image and progressive politics . . . has made him a media darling.”71

  On Tuesday morning, January 21, at the Hotel Allegro, a capacity crowd of several hundred people filled the modest room where Barack would announce his candidacy. Emil Jones Jr. and U.S. representatives Jesse Jackson Jr. and Danny Davis joined white state senators Denny Jacobs, Terry Link, and Larry Walsh on the dais. “I don’t have personal wealth or a famous name,” Barack told the crowd, “but I have a fire in my belly for fairness and justice.” Assailing the incumbent, Barack declared that “four years ago, Peter Fitzgerald bought himself a Senate seat, and he’s betrayed Illinois ever since.” Saying that he was running to help the state’s “working families,” Barack argued that “We have a fairness deficit in this country. We have a hope deficit in this country. We have an opportunity deficit in this country.” Using as a refrain the phrase “What would Dr. King say?” Barack proclaimed that “we need a politics of hope in this country,” not “a politics of division.”

  A short press conference followed Barack’s formal announcement, and Dan Shomon had prepared some “talking points” for the officials supporting Barack. Reminding everyone that more than 25 percent of Democratic primary voters were African Americans, Dan stressed how “Obama did a poll in May 2002 that showed he can win.” Barack answered the first question by stating, “I would not have announced if I didn’t think I could win,” and he expressed hope that he could raise $4 million. “I’m certain we’ll have enough resources to get our message out.” Jesse Jackson Jr. told the reporters, “I don’t think anyone in the entire state has the intellectual capacity of Barack Obama,” and conservative white downstater Denny Jacobs called Barack “a gem. He can grasp all the issues, has a knack of being up-front and making friends. He can handle Washington.”

  A seemingly relaxed Michelle Obama was among those at the Allegro event. Speaking with Mike Marrs, the former Senate staffer who was one of the core members of the Obama Issues Committee, Michelle commiserated about his wife’s nursing problems. As the gathering was breaking up, Michelle reminded Marrs about her advice for his wife. “Michael, don’t forget to tell Deanna to put lanolin on her nipples!” Mike was bemused that Michelle “had no qualms about shouting this down a hallway,” and he believed “she was fantastic—just a wonderful person.” Michelle had given her blessing for what she thought would be Barack’s final run for office, and in fourteen months, the burden of having a husband who was constantly away from home because of politics would finally end unless Barack somehow triumphed in the March 16, 2004, Democratic primary.

  That night’s local news on WLS Channel 7, Chicago’s ABC affiliate, devoted all of thirty-five seconds to Barack’s announcement. The “Harvard-educated lawyer” hailed “from the South Side Hyde Park community” and had lost his 2000 challenge to Bobby Rush. The next morning’s Chicago Defender was hardly more auspicious, because it quoted a little-known nationalist as declaring that “Obama has no relationship with the Black community and is a product of the white lakefront community. He is a white liberal in blackface.” There again was the ghost of 2000, rooted in the events of seven years earlier when Alice Palmer had tried to go back on her word. That evening on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight, host Phil Ponce had a nine-minute colloquy with Barack, who praised Carol Moseley Braun as a “trailblazer.” He said he would have stayed out of the Senate race had she entered because “we share a base.” Asked why he was running, Barack replied that “we have a crisis at the national level building, both economically but also in terms of foreign policy.” Peter Fitzgerald “has not displayed the sort of leadership on key issues” that was needed, and “the thing that people are most concerned about is their economic security,” just as Paul Harstad’s memo to Barack had stressed. In closing, Ponce asked Barack if it was helpful to have a governor named Rod Blagojevich if your name was Barack Obama. “Rod’s a trailblazer and a hero of mine,” Barack gushed, noting how “America is by nature a hybrid culture.” Yet there was one ineradicable difference between a Blagojevich and an Obama. “Race, I think, is at the center of the American dilemma, and it always has been.”72

  Chapter Nine

  CALCULATION, COINCIDENCE, CORONATION

  ILLINOIS AND BOSTON

  JANUARY 2003–NOVEMBER 2004

  A few hours after Barack’s announcement, Blair Hull’s campaign notified the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that their candidate’s personal contributions had exceeded $1.3 million. Pursuant to the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, popularly known as McCain-Feingold after its Senate sponsors, Arizona Republican John McCain and Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, Hull’s filing triggered the so-called millionaires’ amendment. When a wealthy candidate like Hull put a huge amount of his own money into a race, the $2,000 limit on personal contributions to competing candidates increased to $6,000 to maintain parity. Once Hull reached $2.1 million in self-funding, a second trigger would allow his primary opponent
s to accept up to $12,000 from individual contributors. For Barack’s campaign, as for Dan Hynes’s and Gery Chico’s, Hull’s investment made available a new pool of wealthy contributors: everyone who already had given them $2,000 toward the primary was now eligible to give an additional $4,000. Fund-raising was uppermost in Barack’s mind, because each campaign’s final-quarter 2002 FEC reports were due by January 31.

  Barack later wrote that he began his formal candidacy “with an energy and joy that I’d thought I had lost.” That Sunday Barack accompanied Jesse Jackson Sr. on a visit to Pembroke, Illinois, an almost all-black township an hour south of Chicago where poor farmland had caused dire rural poverty. Monday his campaign team convened to sketch out their game plan for the months ahead. In time both a press spokesperson and an African American “base vote” organizer would be added to the skeletal staff, but four major tasks lay ahead. Number one was of course “raise money.” Dan Shomon was hoping to announce having raised $300,000 in 2002 and a total of $400,000 by January 31 in order to demonstrate “that we are competitive,” but more crucial would be hitting $1 million by the end of the next FEC reporting period on June 30. A second priority was to secure additional crucial endorsements, particularly Bobby Rush and white progressive U.S. representatives Jan Schakowsky from the North Shore and Lane Evans from Quad Cities. Equally important were major unions: the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and the Illinois Federation of Teachers (IFT). With their backing, it might be possible to deny labor favorite Dan Hynes the official endorsement of the Illinois AFL-CIO.

  Third was to take advantage of the Democrats’ control of the state Senate to bulk up Barack’s legislative résumé by passing and publicizing bills he was ready to champion: a renewal and expansion of Illinois’s earned-income tax credit (EITC), a hospital “report card” accountability measure that was SEIU’s top priority, the racial profiling and death penalty reforms that had been blocked in 2002 as well as health measures that would go through the committee Barack now chaired. Hardworking members of Barack’s all-volunteer issues committee were busily pulling together other proposals to demonstrate that “Barack is fiscally responsible and is willing to stand up to powerful special interests.” But Barack’s political consultants knew they also needed to be prepared to play defense on the “missed gun vote (child was sick),” which had drawn so much public criticism three years earlier, and also the $5 million in low-visibility “member initiative” funds Barack had doled out. Those were “90 percent unimpeachable,” John Kupper noted, but the grants that had gone to “Jesse’s Citizen Education Project” and to “Yesse Yehudah” could be problematic if opponents focused on them.

  Forty-eight hours later, Barack alerted Dan Shomon that his draft of their fund-raising announcement had to be amended. “Chief: The release itself looks very good. Only problem is that the numbers aren’t quite right. Our report will show $289,000, not over $300,000, because we can’t include some of the checks we got in. In addition, as hard as I’m pushing, the week of the announcement set us back in terms of fundraising, so that at best we’ll have close to $400,000 raised by this weekend—and that’s only in pledges; actual collected checks will be closer to $350,000. I think we can use the same release, but use ‘almost $400,000 raised’ and ‘close to $300,000’” in hand. “From here on out, it’s call time, all the time.” Later Barack recounted that “the first $250,000 I raised was like pulling teeth” because beyond Illinois “no major Democratic donors knew me, I had a funny name,” and “they wouldn’t take my phone calls.” Fund-raising consultant Joe McLean had stressed to Barack and finance director Claire Serdiuk that a U.S. Senate race entailed “a high volume, high dollar, candidate-driven call shop,” and that for the candidate, “it’s hard work that requires real discipline.” Claire “understood everything,” Joe recalled, and as the legislature’s spring 2003 session got under way, Claire joined Barack in his Jeep Cherokee for the three-hour drive to Springfield and back, holding the “call book” and dialing donors on Barack’s cell phone as he drove. Their “connect rate” and “commit rate” were fair to middling, but call discipline was much easier to impose on I-55 than it was in the office. By late January, Katrina Emmons had been offered a job at more than double the salary the campaign was paying her, which would allow her to save for law school. Barack “was really not pleased” when she told him she was leaving, “because he’s bent over backwards for me” in paying for the health coverage she lost when she left Miner Barnhart. Katrina sensed that Barack’s displeasure reflected a belief that she thought he could not win, but young former Senate staffer Randon Gardley stepped into Katrina’s shoes as Claire’s assistant. When Dan Shomon’s mother passed away at the end of January, Dan had to cope with family matters, and Barack’s skeletal campaign staff was stretched very thin.

  Competitors’ FEC filings showed that Gery Chico, with more than $1 million raised, and Dan Hynes, with more than $900,000, were much closer to Blair Hull’s total than to Barack’s modest $290,000. But Obama for Illinois was spending little compared to the others, and in reporting everyone’s numbers, the Chicago Sun-Times said Barack “spends between four and five hours a day on the phone doing fund-raising.” Senate session days put an increasing crimp on that claim, but Barack proceeded with his plan of demonstrating serious legislative activity as he introduced a passel of new bills, including one to expand KidCare.1

  In Chicago, John Kupper and David Axelrod prepared an eight-page “Obama for U.S. Senate Strategic Plan.” Their uppermost fear was that Barack would not be the sole credible African American candidate in the race, because it appeared that wealthy health care executive Joyce Washington, who had made an impressive but unsuccessful 2002 race for the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor, intended to run. “Washington’s permanent entry in this race would be a significant factor, altering the strategy for achieving an Obama victory in a material way” by lessening the portion Barack could expect of the African American vote. “Anything that can conceivably be done to convince Washington there is no oxygen in the race for her must be undertaken,” because “losing a significant chunk of the Obama base may not be fatal but could be terribly harmful.” Senate president Emil Jones Jr., who had heartily supported Washington’s earlier candidacy, was “livid” that Washington would challenge Barack, and Kupper noted that “blocking off her key funding and political avenues is the greatest thing that can be done to get her to reconsider.”

  “Obtaining an overwhelming percentage of a strong African-American turnout and a small but significant percentage of the white vote” from “progressive communities in the North Shore suburbs and Lakefront” would be essential for an Obama victory. “The campaign should not invest real resources downstate,” the Illinois term for all of the state, not just its southern half, beyond “Chicagoland”—Cook County and the five surrounding “collar counties” that made up Chicago’s suburbs. An Obama win would be “much more difficult if the downstate vote” was “gravitating disproportionately to one candidate,” as had happened in Blagojevich’s 2002 primary win. With Blair Hull and Dan Hynes each expected to follow the governor’s playbook, competition for those voters was a certainty.

  “It is critical that over the next couple months, Obama uses his leadership position in Springfield to develop a signature health care issue or two,” Kupper recommended, so as “to establish early visibility on this central issue for primary voters,” as Paul Harstad’s earlier polling had shown. Kupper also sketched out three alternative budgets, with spending totals ranging from just under $4.3 million to more than $4.6 million. “The recommended $4.665 million budget attached to this plan is a little more aggressive and expensive than the $4 million figure the campaign currently believes it will raise,” Kupper acknowledged, but the higher figure allowed for “earlier and heavier Chicago television” advertising than the lower. The campaign will maintain “a fairly skeletal staff st
ructure for a race of this size” as “every dollar must be preserved for persuasion activities” late in the race. “Obama’s solicitation program at this point must be the central thrust of the campaign. The call and meeting time must dictate the schedule—completely. Political and press needs . . . must be scheduled around the 20-to-25 hours a week the candidate must spend on the phone and in solicitation meetings. This must be enforced with maniacal discipline,” for January’s experience had shown that “there are too few calls being completed each week.”

  Beyond fund-raising, identifying “a signature health care initiative or two” should be Barack’s top goal, so as to “build his reputation as the strongest voice in the race against the GOP’s agenda.” But the campaign also had to focus on its presumed base, because “any significant African American defections will potentially create an outsized reaction from the insider press. The ongoing effort to secure Congressman Rush’s endorsement must continue,” and efforts to deter Joyce Washington soon included a public attack by her little-known former campaign manager, Sean Howard. The Chicago Defender charitably headlined Howard’s denunciation “Activists Say No to Joyce Washington” and quoted him as saying that “there has to be an outside influence for her to make this type of run” when other black political leaders had already pledged their support to Barack.2