Ever since Florida had replaced Illinois as the election fraud capital of America, I’d been writing about what our state was doing to avoid taking back the title. So I called Obama. I suspected he was unhappy about my Chicago Reader story on the First Congressional District race, which had been full of his enemies’ accusations that he wasn’t black enough for the South Side. But he returned my phone call.
“The principal reason is partisanship,” he told me, in his clipped diction, when I asked about the Republican bill. “Privately, I don’t think any of the Republican legislators would deny that. Why would they want to encourage an additional ten percent in Cook County? That’s a direct blow against them in statewide races.”
When I thanked Obama for his time, he responded with an icy “You’re welcome”—the iciest I’d ever heard from a politician. (Curtness is Obama’s favorite method of displaying anger.) My first thought was, That guy’s got some great ideas. If he ever learns how to act like a human being, he may go someplace in politics. Later, I realized that Obama’s “You’re welcome” was a smooth move. Blowing me off would have done him no good. The Reader had a following among white liberals, an important constituency for Obama in a statewide race. Berating a writer would have invited more bad publicity. Just by using a peevish tone of voice, he’d let me know he was unhappy with my work and ensured his displeasure didn’t make the paper. Obama was the most media-conscious politician I had ever met. During the congressional race, whenever I showed up at a campaign event, he always made a point of walking up to me, touching my arm, and asking, “How are you doing?” in a manner that came off as collegial rather than desperate for publicity. Politicians rarely pursue reporters. Most have to be chased across the room or approached as though they are living altars. Obama tried to bond with the press. When it mattered, the press would return the compliment.
In the spring of 2002, Obama’s testy relationship with Ricky Hendon finally blew up into an angry, shoving, profane brawl, right on the senate floor.
After five years of working together—even sponsoring some bills together—Hendon was still needling Obama about his blackness.
“Hey, Barack,” he’d taunt, “you figure out if you’re black or white yet?”
Obama tried to brush it off. Once, in a black caucus meeting, Hendon told him, “You have to stay black all the time. You have to be black on all issues.”
“This is not a black or white issue,” Obama responded tersely.
Obama had nominated Senator Kimberly Lightford, a young woman from the western suburbs, as chairman of the black caucus. They were allies. After Lightford’s first race, Obama wrote her a $500 check to cover campaign debts. Lightford and Emil Jones tried to keep the peace between Obama and Hendon, but there were days when Obama didn’t show up for meetings because he didn’t feel like being hassled.
On the senate floor, Obama sat alongside three white Democrats from the Chicago area—Terry Link, Carol Ronen, and Lisa Madigan. Their arrangement was called Liberal Row, and it only deepened Hendon’s conviction that Obama’s true home was in the white progressive community.
On June 11, the senate voted on a proposal to close a Department of Children and Family Services office in Hendon’s district. Anguished that the state was snatching another social program from the impoverished West Side, Hendon stood up to speak. He delivered an emotional plea for the children of his neighborhood.
“It just bothers me that you’re cutting education to the core, you’re destroying lives of the—of the children of this state and nobody’s even paying no damn attention,” Hendon said. “It’s like you don’t even care. Well, I care. And it makes a difference what we do here in this chamber out there in the real world…stop cutting everything from the children of this state.”
When the roll was called, every Democrat voted to keep the office open—except the four liberals. Hendon was furious. He stalked down the Row, demanding answers at every desk. Madigan explained that she was running for attorney general and needed to appear tough on government spending. Link admitted he had voted with the rest of Liberal Row. Ronen apologized and asked for Hendon’s forgiveness. Then Hendon confronted Obama.
“Well, we have to be fiscally prudent,” Obama said.
“What that mean?” Hendon demanded.
“Tight economy,” Obama replied. “We need to watch our coffers.”
When the next round of budget cuts came up—including a million-dollar grant to the Chicago for Summer Youth jobs—Obama rose to speak. He acknowledged that budget cuts were necessary but chided the Republicans for portraying themselves as pork busters while keeping alive a $2 million program to train students in video production and $250,000 for suburban recreation.
“It is not true that somehow that side of the aisle has been purely above politics or pork or partisanship in this process,” Obama said. “In fact, I think when we start looking at the votes, we’ll—it’ll turn out that the governor’s office has its favorites, and it’s looking after the—its favorites. And that’s fair. That’s the nature of the political beast, but I don’t want the—the public to be fooled into thinking that somehow, you-all have a monopoly on responsible budgeting.”
That was too much sanctimony for Hendon to bear. Obama, he was sure, was building a record to present to white voters when he ran for higher office. He needed a few “fiscally conservative” votes, so he was selling out the poor folks on the West Side to secure his political future. Hendon pressed his light, demanding recognition from the chair.
“I just want to say to the last speaker, you got a lot of nerve to talk about being responsible and then you voted for closing the DCFS office on the West Side, when you wouldn’t have voted to close it on the South Side,” he raged. “So I apologize to my Republican friends about my bipartisanship comments, ’cause clearly there’s some Democrats on this side of the aisle that don’t care about the West Side either, especially the last speaker.”
Then Obama pressed his light. He apologized for the vote, but he also made it clear he didn’t take kindly to being called out in front of the entire senate.
“I understand Senator Hendon’s anger at—actually—the—I was not aware that I had voted no on that last—last piece of legislation. I would have the record record that I intended to vote yes. On the other hand, I would appreciate that next time my dear colleague Senator Hendon ask me about a vote before he names me on the floor.”
The words were acid with sarcasm and false collegiality. Once Obama’s microphone was off, he confronted Hendon directly.
“You embarrassed me on the senate floor,” Obama hissed. “If you ever do it again, I’ll kick your ass.”
“Really?” Hendon retorted.
“You heard me, and if you come back here by the telephones, where the press can’t see, I’ll kick your ass right now.”
At five foot seven, Hendon was half a head shorter than Obama, but he was also from the toughest district in the senate. He couldn’t go back to the West Side and tell his constituents he’d backed off a fight with a Harvard grad—from Hyde Park.
“OK,” Hendon said. “Let’s go.”
Hendon led the way to the telephone area, where he dared Obama to hit him. The Illinois senate chamber was designed in the nineteenth century, with as much flourish and pomposity as that era’s oratory: marble Ionic columns capped with gilded scrolls rose behind the rostrum. Glass chandeliers dangled from the ceiling. A thick burgundy carpet, patterned with goldenrod accents, absorbed the loafers of senators as they walked to their polished wooden desks, which were arranged in expanding semicircles. Obama and Hendon were treating this noble room like the sidewalk outside a tavern. The two men shoved and swore at each other until Emil Jones noticed the fight and sent Donne Trotter to break it up. Jones told Hendon, an assistant minority leader, to go back to his seat and start acting like a member of the leadership. He told Obama that a major misconduct penalty wasn’t going to look good on his legislative record. Even that didn’t end
the dispute. A TV reporter had seen the donnybrook and asked Obama about it. It had been no big deal, Obama insisted. He and Hendon had worked out their differences.
Hendon wouldn’t talk about the fight on TV, but he denied making up with Obama. There was nothing to apologize for. This was relayed to Obama, who wasn’t happy to hear it. Those long legs strode back to Hendon’s desk, and that long, lean face loomed in to say something. Before Obama could speak, Hendon shouted for Jones, sitting three seats away.
“Get this guy out of my face!”
Jones dragged Obama off the floor.
After that day, the two senators never discussed their showdown, but Hendon began treating Obama with more respect, less antagonism. The name-calling stopped. Obama had shown the West Sider that he was a fighter, not just a passionless lawyer/professor who wouldn’t stand up for himself. Some senators, who could never imagine Obama losing his cool, wondered if the entire fight had been calculated to make just that point.
Chapter 11
“YOU HAVE THE POWER TO MAKE A U.S. SENATOR”
B A R A C K O B A M A ’ S B I G G E S T P R O B L E M in running for the Senate was money. He didn’t have any. In fact, he had less than no money. His credit cards were still maxed out, because of the congressional race, and he and Michelle were paying off student loans so steep they exceeded the mortgage. One day, after he became famous, Dreams from My Father would hit the bestseller list, but in the early 2000s, it was an out-of-print book that generated no royalties for its author. On his trips to Springfield, Obama drove a Dodge Neon, one of the smallest, cheapest cars a patriotic American politician could own.
Of course, thanks to his attendance at ABLE meetings, Obama knew people with money. When he finally decided to run, in 2002, he approached black business owners for help.
Black Chicago wanted that Senate seat back. And many members of the city’s Talented Tenth saw Obama as the ideal candidate. The city’s bankers, lawyers, and investors weren’t interested in simply catering to the ghetto trade, like the generation of black entrepreneurs before them. They wanted to do business with whites, too. In Obama, they recognized a character with the same crossover dreams.
There were intraracial politics at work, too. In the black community, preachers had always been the leading power brokers. They had money, and they had voters. Many successful black politicians, such as Adam Clayton Powell Jr., had used a pulpit as a platform to achieve office. During segregation, that had been essential, because the church was the center of black life, the only place blacks could gather to express their aspirations. But segregation was long gone, so it was time to replace that old model. White politicians got their money from businesspeople. Blacks should do the same, especially if they wanted to win among the wider electorate. It was time to follow the American way of politics. The ministers could be a source of money, but not the leading source. Let them focus on the clergy role, while businesses took over the financial role.
Throughout 2002, Obama held a series of lunches and meetings with black professionals. He told Hermene Hartman he was thinking of running for the Senate but would step aside if Jesse Jackson Jr. or Carol Moseley Braun decided to run. Both had bigger followings in the black community, and Obama didn’t want to be part of another primary in which the “black enough” issue might come up.
John Rogers first heard about Obama’s Senate plans during a Sunday brunch at the home of Valerie Jarrett, who had been close to the Obamas for a decade. As Mayor Daley’s chief of staff, she hired Michelle to work in city hall. Jarrett, who went on to become chairwoman of the Chicago Transit Authority and vice president at the Habitat Company, wasn’t just well connected in the black professional world, she was its center. When Obama told Jarrett, “There’s something I want to bounce off you,” she also invited Rogers and Nesbitt to the meeting, knowing that he was going to entertain them all with his fool dream of being a United States senator. Obama came to Sunday brunch at Jarrett’s house, with Michelle in tow.
Jarrett thought running for the Senate was a terrible idea—Obama just lost to Rush, he was broke, he had two toddlers at home, and Michelle didn’t like him traveling all over the state. So Obama went to work on the small gathering, begging for one last chance to satisfy his addiction to politics. This race would be different from the last, he promised.
“I’ve talked to Emil Jones,” Obama said. “He’s a huge political force, and he’s prepared to support me. When I ran for Congress, I didn’t have that kind of support. And if I lose, then, Michelle, I’ll give up politics. If I can’t do it this time, I promise I’ll get a normal job in the private sector, so this’ll be the last time I ask you to do this, unless I win. And money’s a problem, so, Valerie, I think you should help me, because you’re in the business community, you and John. You two should think about helping me do this.”
“So what if you lose?” Jarrett challenged him.
“If I’m not worried about losing, why are you?” Obama said. “If I lose, I lose. But I think I’ll win.”
Jarrett wasn’t convinced Obama could win, but she was convinced she should support him. Rogers was an easier sell. His friend was about to take a huge chance, so how could he do anything but throw all his personal and financial resources behind the campaign?
Rogers’s first task was to get Carol Moseley Braun out of the race. He’d been finance chairman of her successful Senate campaign, so he could tell her the truth: She didn’t have the support to run again. Black Chicago’s excitement over Moseley Braun’s 1992 victory—she was the first African-American Democrat in the Senate’s history—had turned to disappointment during her six years in Washington. Carol had been given the chance to become the most respected black politician in America, and she’d blown it. Paul Simon, her Senate seat mate for four years, summed up Moseley Braun’s problems in one sentence: “She fell in love with the wrong person.” Her campaign manager/boyfriend, Kgosie Matthews, earned $15,000 a month while other staffers weren’t getting paid. After the election, Moseley Braun and Matthews jetted off on a monthlong trip to Africa. Worst of all, he took her to visit Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, a trip she made without informing the State Department.
Obama insisted, publicly and privately, that if Moseley Braun was in, he was out. How could he win? Her name recognition in Illinois was 92 percent. His was 18 percent. And they would both be competing for black votes, which would be decisive in a primary sure to be full of white politicians.
“If Carol runs, I won’t run,” he told a reporter. “I just won’t have a chance. We’re too similar, or we’re seen as too similar: two potentially nonthreatening black politicians from the South Side of Chicago.”
To give Moseley Braun a reason not to run, Rogers called Jamie Dimon, CEO of Bank One, and asked if he would give her a job. Dimon wouldn’t. Obama invited Moseley Braun to his district office to discuss the race. With the same high-handedness that caused her to run through five chiefs of staff in six years, Moseley Braun made it clear that running for her old Senate seat was her prerogative. Obama would just have to wait for her decision.
But Moseley Braun wouldn’t make one. Todd Spivak of the Hyde Park Herald, Moseley Braun’s neighborhood paper, talked to her nearly every week.
“She always talked about she’s waiting for this, she’s looking at this, and she would not come out,” Spivak would recall. “She put everything on hold. Carol became more and more paranoid and upset with me. She came to my office once to yell at my editor for a story I wrote where I was pretty much just parroting what the dailies were saying. She wasn’t being embraced by her old supporters. It took her a while to realize, ‘My political career is really over.’ ”
Obama was having better success asking his senate colleagues for support. As he’d told Valerie Jarrett, he started by approaching Emil Jones. If the Democrats took over the state senate in 2002, as they seemed likely to do, Jones would become senate president.
“You know,” Obama told his caucus leader, “you’r
e a pretty powerful guy. You have the power to make a U.S. senator.”
“Oh, yeah?” Jones said. “Who?”
“Me,” Obama told him.
Jones agreed to help. He had opposed Obama in his races for the state senate and the U.S. Congress, but this time the young man was playing by the rules: He wasn’t challenging an incumbent Democrat. Obama’s poker buddies were on board, too. In the spring of 2002, Obama met Larry Walsh for breakfast at the Renaissance Center in Springfield.
“I want to ask you some very difficult questions,” he told Walsh. Then he laid out his plan for a Senate run and asked if Walsh would support him.
“Absolutely,” Walsh said.
Not only had the two senators served together—and played cards together—for five years, but Obama had once done Walsh a big political favor. In 1998, Walsh won a difficult primary against an African-American opponent. To mend fences with the black community, he organized a luncheon for African-American leaders in Joliet. Obama had once told Walsh, “If you ever need me, if you’d like me to speak to black ministers or business leaders or whatever, I’d be more than glad to come down.” So Walsh invited Obama to keynote the luncheon. Obama’s speech resonated with the audience. That fall, Walsh received strong black support.
Walsh, Link, and Jacobs all represented districts that were anchored by a city with a significant black population. Obama was going to do well in Chicago, but to win the entire state, he also needed to do well in Joliet, Waukegan, and Rock Island. Those three old white guys could help.
While Obama waited for Moseley Braun to announce her plans, he started a fund-raising committee. Raising money couldn’t wait. Winning the Senate seat was going to cost at least $4 million, most of it for TV ads to introduce himself to Illinois. Peter Fitzgerald had spent $14 million of his family wealth, an amount Obama considered obscene.
Young Mr. Obama Page 18