Young Mr. Obama

by Edward McClelland

  Once he was hired as chief strategist, Axelrod also replaced Dan Shomon as Obama’s campaign manager, bringing in Jim Cauley, a Kentuckian he had worked with on a mayoral campaign in Baltimore. Shomon was given the job of Downstate coordinator. He had been reluctant to spend nearly two years managing a Senate campaign and suggested that Obama find a new right-hand man. That was fine with Obama’s new crew of professionals. They didn’t think Shomon had the policy or organizational skills to run a statewide race.

  Loyalty to old allies is not one of Barack Obama’s long suits. Unlike Bill Clinton, whose White House chief of staff was a kindergarten classmate, or Lyndon Johnson, who was served as an aide for three decades by a high school debate student he’d coached in Houston, Obama has no deep native ties to the state where he made his political career. Throughout Obama’s rise, most of his relationships were expedient: Once he had no more use for supporters, he dropped them from his circle, sometimes telling perplexed functionaries to stop calling his cell phone and start calling his people. There was no one he could point to and say, “We’ve been tight for twenty years.” It was the unflattering side of Obama’s detached intellectualism. Johnnie Owens was Obama’s closest friend during the community organizing days and a best man at his wedding. But once Obama began moving among lawyers, politicians, and professors, the old compatriots rarely saw each other. Obama lost touch with Jerry Kellman until a reporter reconnected them during his U.S. Senate run. Carole Anne Harwell, Obama’s first campaign manager, had no significant role in his subsequent races. During Obama’s run for president, Shomon would attempt to exploit the Obama connection to benefit his lobbying business. The campaign scolded him publicly.

  “There were a number of people who worked for Barack in the early days, then found Barack was working with a different group of people,” as one old supporter would put it. “They felt kind of squeezed out.”

  While that suggests a coldness to Obama’s ambition, it did help him avoid the corruption and cronyism that would have ensnared a traditional Chicago politician, brought up in the code of fidelity to the ones that brung him. Obama needed Chicago to put him in a position to run for president, but he couldn’t be too Chicago if he wanted to win.

  When Axelrod took over the campaign, in mid-2003, Obama was polling at 9 percent among the few Illinoisans paying attention to the Senate primary. The front runner, Dan Hynes, was supported by a quarter of the primary voters and had already enlisted the great majority of the state’s 102 county chairmen. Still, Axelrod believed that Obama could crank his numbers as high as 43 percent by Election Day if he swept the black community in Chicago, captured wealthy suburban whites, and won Downstate counties with colleges or large black populations. If the campaign met its goal of raising $4 million, they’d be able to start airing television ads in January, two months before the primary—just enough time to transform Obama into a Prairie State idol.

  At the time, though, he was still an obscure state senator (a redundancy if there ever was one) with a name uncomfortably close to that of the leader of al-Qaeda. Shortly after 9/11, a Chicago political consultant who’d been sizing Obama up as a Senate prospect told him, “The name thing is going to be a problem.” (Capitol Fax publisher Rich Miller once teasingly told Obama that he should change his name to “Barry O’Bama” if he wanted to run for statewide office.) When Representative Jan Schakowsky wore an Obama button to the White House, President George W. Bush did a double take on first seeing his successor’s name.

  “I’ve never heard of him,” Bush explained.

  “You will,” Schakowsky promised.

  Even some well-educated voters were declaring, “I want to vote for someone with an American name.” Axelrod had not yet succeeded in spreading Obamamania to the suburbs. The foundations of Obama’s campaign were black professionals and the black church. At the District, a West Loop nightclub, he threw a fund-raiser for the kinds of rich young folks who hung Alpha Phi Alpha paddles in their lofts and had their weddings featured in Jet.

  “The crowd of 500 people were dressed to the hilt, sporting chic natural and relaxed hairdos, Prada, Gucci and Louis Vuitton accessories,” the Hyde Park Herald wrote of the event, which raised $50,000. “Party goers, including Hyde Park Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th) and Illinois Senate President Emil Jones, grooved to live jazz, R&B oldies from Chic and current neo-soul hits from Jill Scott, while munching on California rolls and fried chicken.”

  Obama had always professed his distaste for fund-raising, but under pressure to collect $4 million, he was overcoming any reluctance about asking people for money. In fact, he was taking political style tips from Governor Blagojevich, who was well known for his two-handed approach to politicking: The right hand shakes while the left goes for the wallet. Obama and Blagojevich had little use for each other personally. Both wanted to be president, and Blagojevich, raised in a dreary Northwest Side apartment by a steelworker father, thought Hyde Parkers were pampered elitists. But as a loyal Democrat, Obama had sat in on Blagojevich’s campaign strategy sessions and came to envy his skill at glad-handing donors while pestering them for cash. Blagojevich’s charm, combined with Illinois’s no-limit campaign contribution laws, had enabled him to suck up $24 million for his gubernatorial campaign.

  As a Senate candidate, Obama was operating under federal funding laws, but Blair Hull’s personal wealth meant that Obama could take advantage of the “millionare’s exemption,” which allowed individuals to donate up to $12,500 to a candidate running against a self-financed swell. Steven Rogers, a business professor at Northwestern University, met the newly aggressive Obama at a golf outing for a West Side charter school. When Obama joined his threesome, on the second hole, Rogers had no idea who the new player was. He quickly found out.

  “Look, man,” Obama told him. “I want to talk to you because I want to run for the U.S. Senate.”

  “Look, man, you need to go sit your ass down somewhere,” Rogers said, finally recognizing the name. “You just got your ass beat by Bobby Rush. You can’t win. You got two damn African names. You need to be like my children: Akila Rogers. Or, instead of Barack Obama, you need to be Steven Obama or Barack Jones.”

  They had a good laugh, but on the fourth hole, Obama again said, “I want to run for Senate.”

  “Jesus Christ, man!” Rogers exploded. “What can I do for you?”

  “My wife wants me to clear up debts from running for Congress.”

  “How much debt do you have?”

  “Eight thousand dollars.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Rogers said. “I don’t know you, but Greg White knows you. Greg brought you to my foursome. I’m gonna give you $3,000.”

  After that, Rogers heard from Obama every week. As a man who believed that well-off blacks had a duty to support black political talent, Rogers ended up donating tens of thousands of dollars to Obama’s campaigns. During the general election, when Obama was running away from Alan Keyes and didn’t need the money himself, Rogers wrote five $2,000 checks to Democrats in close Senate races so Obama could collect chits in his new workplace.

  The most important financial help Obama received came from a June 2003 fund-raiser held by attorney Stephen Pugh in the lobby of his LaSalle Street office tower. Obama needed to top $1 million by the July 1 campaign filing disclosure to prove he was a serious candidate. LaSalle Street is the main drag of Chicago’s business and legal worlds, so Pugh was the ideal host. He introduced Obama as a future president of the United States, then said with a chuckle, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” With most of Pugh’s fellow ABLE members in attendance (as well as Emil Jones), the event raised several hundred thousand dollars, more than enough for Obama to meet his goal. Pugh had been given a hand up by Harold Washington and Emil Jones, and now he was offering a hand up to Obama. It was the unspoken contract between black politician and black businessman, its terms fully executed.

  Outside of Chicago, Illinois’s largest concentration of African-Americans is in the re
gion known as Metro East—the trans-Mississippi suburbs of St. Louis. East St. Louis, hometown of Miles Davis and Jackie Joyner-Kersee, is the blackest city in the United States—97 percent African-American.

  Through his old friend Reverend Alvin Love, president of the Developing Communities Project, Obama had an in with the area’s black pastors. As Obama had risen in politics, Love had advanced in ecclesiastical influence. By 2003, he was head of the state’s Baptist Convention, which covered four hundred churches. That spring, Love invited Obama to address the convention’s annual meeting, in Danville. After giving a biblically-themed speech—“A lot of people say this campaign is impossible, but with God, all things are possible”—Obama collected business cards from two hundred preachers.

  Obama’s Metro East coordinator was Ray Coleman, a state park supervisor who had been recruited to the campaign by Michael Pittman, a Springfield real estate developer Obama knew through a lobbyist. Downstate blacks never questioned Obama’s racial authenticity. They had other reservations about his candidacy. Living in communities where whites were openly bigoted (the 1909 Springfield Race Riot is still a divisive issue in the state capital), they doubted their Caucasian neighbors would vote for Obama, and some even worried they’d look “too black” by supporting him. Springfield isn’t Chicago, where blacks have their own machine-within-a-Machine. Dan Hynes and Rod Blagojevich controlled thousands of state jobs in Springfield. The first time Pittman met Obama, he thought, This guy is sharp. Then he thought, If this guy wasn’t black, he could be president. Pittman held a fund-raiser for black professionals, which raised several thousand dollars, and he called black political junkies all over Central Illinois, spreading the word about Obama.

  When Ray Coleman heard from Pittman, he, too, was skeptical.

  “Mike,” he said, “the guy can’t win with a name like that. It’s too close to ‘Osama.’ It’s still close to Nine/Eleven.”

  “I’m gonna send you an article from the Chicago Sun-Times,” Pittman replied. “It says if eighty-five percent of African-American voters support Obama, he’ll win.”

  Coleman read the article, was impressed with Obama’s credentials, and agreed to run the local operation. When Obama and Shomon arrived in Metro East, Coleman took them around to the churches. At St. John Missionary Baptist, in Centerville, Obama got a few minutes in the study of Reverend Robert Jones. His first words to Jones were, “How are you doing? Alvin Love is a friend of yours. He said you’re a good man to meet in this part of the state.”

  Black pastors are used to politicians using their churches for campaign speeches. They usually allow it, but they’re not always enthusiastic. Obama, though, had the endorsement of Reverend Love. That went a long way with the Baptist clergy. Jones invited Obama to speak at a youth revival at Mt. Zion Baptist in East St. Louis—the church where Jesse Jackson began his first presidential campaign in 1984. A crowd of fifteen hundred, Jones promised.

  The church was packed. Obama started with his shopworn stump joke—“Some people call me Yo Mama, some people call me Alabama”—and the crowd roared with laughter. When he told them, “I’m not asking you to work for me because I’m African-American, but don’t we deserve to have at least one in the Senate?” they nodded, and when he talked about folks who’d grown up in the age of Jim Crow but believed America could be a better place, they stood and cheered.

  The powerful St. Clair County machine was supporting Hynes, and Hull was paying workers $10 an hour to staple his signs to every telephone pole in the American Bottom, as the area’s alluvial lowlands are known. But Obama and Shomon thought the campaign could do at least as well as Carol Moseley Braun had in Metro East. Shomon asked Coleman if he could turn out four thousand votes in St. Clair County, which includes East St. Louis. It seemed like a reasonable goal, since Obama’s only important local supporters were the state senators James Clayborne and Bill Haine.

  “Dan, I’ll get you that,” Coleman promised. “I think we’re going to do better. I think we can get six or eight thousand.”

  When Coleman started talking up Obama, in September 2003, people were asking him, “Who is this guy? Omar?” As the election drew closer, he was hearing from a lot of people who weren’t supposed to be for Obama but had decided that electing a black senator was more important than obeying the county machine. East St. Louis precinct captains were ignoring the party line by asking for Obama yard signs and instructing printers to place “Obama” on their palm cards instead of “Hynes.” In most elections, the voters followed the precinct captains. But this was shaping up to be a people’s election. The voters wanted Obama, so the precinct captains were following.

  All over the South Side of Chicago, billboards were going up: Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson Jr., standing side by side, looking like a pair of cardboard cutouts. It was a message from the Jacksons to black Chicago: We’ve got him. Junior was developing one of the most powerful political organizations in the city—his wife would soon be an alderman—so Obama needed him for votes as well as cred.

  Only one black congressman refused to support Obama: Bobby Rush. Still sore about 2000, Rush endorsed Blair Hull, assuring the millionaire that “blacks won’t vote for Obama.” The endorsement wasn’t motivated by payback, Rush insisted. After all, Rush was an independent, and Hull was the only candidate with the resources to beat the Machine’s boy, Dan Hynes. (Hull was also the only candidate with the resources to hire Rush’s half brother as a $12,000-a-month campaign adviser.)

  Motivated by bitterness, Rush was misreading the black electorate as badly as Obama had done four years earlier. Elders who had supported Rush in 2000 were now behind Obama, for the very same reason: He was the black candidate with the best chance to win. Bishop Arthur Brazier endorsed Obama. So did historian Timuel Black, who publicly scolded the holdouts, asking, “Why can’t we support one of our own?”

  The black politician who most worried Obama was his fellow Senate candidate, Joyce Washington. A health-care consultant who had never held office, Washington was polling in the low single digits. But all her support was coming from the black community. In a close election, 1 or 2 percent might cost Obama the nomination. At one point, Obama, Giangreco, and Axelrod held a conference call to discuss whether to challenge Washington’s petitions. Remembering Alice Palmer, Obama was reluctant. He didn’t want to look like he was bullying another black woman off the ballot. He was supposed to be the inspirational candidate in this race, not the hack. The ill will over a petition challenge might end up costing him more votes than Washington, an innocuous candidate with no money. After a long discussion of the pros and cons, Obama finally said, “Guys, we’re not gonna do it.”

  Obama’s Senate campaign office was in a suite near the top of a low-rise office building on South Michigan Avenue. The view of Lake Michigan was inspiring, but the walls were nearly bare. Obama’s only adornments were a framed copy of his Chicago Reader profile and a poster of Muhammad Ali looming over Sonny Liston, which hung behind the candidate’s desk.

  I visited the office in January 2004, to interview Obama for the Reader. I hadn’t seen him in four years, so I was expecting another preening, insecure performance. When I’d called to set up the meeting, Obama’s press secretary, Pam Smith, had expressed her displeasure with the “negative comments” in my article on his congressional campaign.

  If Obama was still dissatisfied, he didn’t act that way. This was months before he became famous, so he was dealing with the press one-on-one. He greeted me outside his office.

  “Good to see you again,” he intoned casually, gliding across the floor like Fred Astaire playing Abe Lincoln. His tie was firmly knotted, but he’d doffed his suit coat for shirtsleeves.

  We walked into his office, where Smith sat by his side as note taker and timekeeper. I told him I’d seen a picture of Michelle in that morning’s Sun-Times. “She was looking awfully cute,” Obama said, grinning.

  It was only January, but Obama was already developing the themes he would u
se at that summer’s Democratic National Convention. He gave me some of the same lines he’d used on the congregation at Liberty Baptist.

  “There is a tradition of politics that says we are all connected,” Obama recited. “If there is a child on the South Side who cannot read, it makes a difference in my life, even if it’s not my child. If there’s an Arab-American family who’s being rounded up by John Ashcroft without benefit of due process, that threatens my civil liberties. Black folks, white folks, gay, straight, Asian—the reason we can share this space is that we have a mutual regard. That’s what this country’s all about: E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.”

  That was the mission statement of twenty-first-century Obama. As a black candidate, he’d been too inhibited, too embarrassed, to force out such phrases as “our community.” Finally, he was comfortable in his own skin, now that he’d accepted that the skin was half white. As a multicultural politician trying to find a unified theory of racial politics, he was rolling like Tiger Woods at the Masters. The aloofness was gone as well. Intently, he laid out his plan for a federal children’s health insurance program.

  “I think it’d be a good opportunity to lay the groundwork toward expanding health care to all the uninsured,” he said.

  Obama was no longer selling himself. He didn’t mention Harvard once. This time, he had a legislative goal and a strategy for making it happen. Or maybe, because he knew I’d been one of his skeptics, he was selling me on the idea that he wasn’t selling himself. Just as he was looking two moves ahead politically, I’m sure he was two moves ahead of my expectations. It was working. I was impressed that he finally seemed to believe in something more than the fact that being president of the Harvard Law Review is a pretty big deal. He was a big-government liberal, and he was unafraid to confess it.