Rising Star

by David Garrow

  Back in Illinois, increased attention focused on the growing number of death row inmates who were being fully exonerated of the murders they previously had been convicted of committing. Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions was responsible for most of the legwork, and on February 5, Anthony Porter was freed from death row just two hours before his scheduled execution. George Ryan remembered turning to his wife that day and saying, “How the hell does that happen? How does an innocent man sit on death row for fifteen years and gets no relief?” Porter’s near-death experience “piqued my interest,” Ryan later told the Chicago Tribune’s Steve Mills. Six days after Porter’s release, Rich Miller wrote in Capitol Fax that statehouse denizens “can feel the buzz growing on the death penalty issue” as everyone waited to see what Ryan might do.

  In mid-February Emil Jones gave Barack a significant new responsibility by naming him to succeed Donne Trotter as one of Senate Democrats’ three members on the powerful Joint Committee on Administrative Rules. JCAR, as everyone in state government called it, oversaw whether executive branch agencies were properly implementing state laws. The committee could impose a ninety-day delay on any agency rule it found questionable, and executive branch officials were required to respond. Barack listened and did not speak at his first JCAR meeting, but within two months he became cochairman of the twelve-member, officially nonpartisan committee. Veteran southern Illinois Democrat Jim Rea, who previously had known Barack primarily socially, was immediately impressed. “Gosh almighty, where did this guy come from?” he remarked to another colleague. “He’s sharp, he’s asking the right questions, and he wants the answers to those before there’s any action taken.”

  JCAR rarely attracted news coverage, and as February 23’s primary elections approached, most eyes were on U.S. representative Bobby Rush’s challenge to Chicago mayor Richard Daley, who was approaching ten years in office. The Tribune endorsed Daley for a fourth term in a rave editorial praising him for “the transformation of the Chicago Public Schools” under mayoral appointees Paul Vallas and Gery Chico. The Trib stated that “Rush has been a good congressman,” but Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller lambasted Rush’s “ineptitude” in running “a less-than-stellar campaign.”

  Born in southwest Georgia, the fifty-two-year-old Rush had come to Chicago at age seven and enlisted in the U.S. Army when he was seventeen. In the late 1960s, Rush emerged as one of the leading members of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panthers, serving almost six months in prison on a misdemeanor gun charge. After finishing college, in 1975 Rush unsuccessfully challenged 2nd Ward machine alderman William Barnett, but eight years later, with Harold Washington winning the Democratic mayoral nomination, Rush defeated Barnett and joined the City Council, taking an active interest in South Side environmental issues. In 1992 Rush successfully challenged U.S. representative Charlie Hayes for his historic 1st District seat, held by a succession of African Americans ever since Oscar De Priest in 1928 had become the first black member of Congress since 1900 and the first African American ever elected to Congress from outside the South.

  Ten days before the primary, polls showed Daley with an overwhelming 65 to 13 percent lead over Rush. Congressional colleague Jesse Jackson Jr. was one of the few elected officials backing Rush, and when votes were tallied on February 23, Daley crushed Rush 72 to 28 percent, winning almost 45 percent of the African American vote citywide and even carrying Rush’s own 2nd Ward. A decade earlier, Daley had received 4 percent of the 2nd Ward vote. In defeat, Rush attacked black business leaders “who have aligned themselves as part of the Daley machine,” but Chicago journalists marveled at how easily Daley had triumphed in a city that almost every day was earning its title as “the murder capital of the nation.” Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne asked his Saguaro Seminar colleague to explain Daley’s success. Barack said Daley had benefited from an “aversion to ideology and an emphasis on management.” He also explained that political power based on “pinstripe patronage” to wealthy professionals and the campaign contributions that resulted made for a more impregnable mayor than in eras when a payroll patronage machine might split and generate serious challengers. Nowadays, without such a base, “it’s harder for folks to build their own independent organizations.” Tribune columnist Bruce Dold wrote that Chicago’s “African-American political leadership seems to be floundering” and quoted an unnamed alderman as predicting “I’m sure that somebody’s going to come after Bobby, especially after he encouraged candidates to run against incumbent aldermen.” Dold added that “there is talk that state Sen. Barack Obama or [17th Ward] Ald. Terry Peterson would challenge him for his congressional seat.”60

  That February Barack introduced sixteen bills and reintroduced his call for a state constitutional amendment mandating universal health care coverage. His bills sought to lessen low-income workers’ tax burdens and to require the state Department of Human Services to establish three pilot job skills enhancement programs. SB 1055, the Check Acceptance Firm Act, sought to remedy what had happened to Barack and Laura Mullens. Companies would be required to provide “information verification services for retail sellers with respect to a consumer’s personal check to make available by means of a toll-free telephone number the reasons for not accepting the consumer’s check. Requires the reason to be sent to the consumer within 14 days after the request was made.”

  On March 1 Barack and Jesse Jackson Jr. jointly keynoted Northwestern Law School’s Diversity Week. One white 2L thought Barack was the more memorable speaker due to “the level of substance in what he had to say.” Rich Miller of Capitol Fax noted that “nothing much of substance is happening this year” in Springfield, although legislators were complaining about the campaign finance law because they still viewed “campaign funds as their own private cash.” When the chairman of the House Executive Committee showed up audibly drunk at a 10:00 A.M. hearing, newspapers across the state wrote stories about “debating under the influence.” Rich Miller protested that the presence of “an allegedly drunken legislator in and of itself is not news. Lots of legislators, executive branch officials and, yes, even journalists have worked day in and day out with the smell of booze on their breath,” and he reiterated how “most business conducted in Springfield is done after hours, often over a few drinks.” Barack spoke with a reporter investigating the millions Illinois was spending annually on instructional courses for corporate executives at firms such as Chrysler, with overhead payments going to the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association and the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, two of the state’s top campaign contributors. “I don’t think the state should subsidize these folks at the same time we are not able to adequately fund programs for welfare mothers who are trying to move into the work force,” Barack complained.

  By the second week of March, the George Ryan–Pate Philip friendship was indeed coming apart. Ryan wanted to name House minority leader Lee Daniels, no friend of Philip’s, as chairman of the state Republican Party. A bitter argument ensued, and Rich Miller reported that Ryan told “several people afterwards that he had never been spoken to so harshly in his entire life.”

  By early March Barack was privately pondering whether he should leave the state Senate and Springfield’s incestuous political life for more remunerative work and then reenter electoral politics some years later. Barack discreetly spoke with two of the most senior partners at Sidley & Austin: Newton Minow and Eden Martin. Barack had come to know Martin well on the boards of the Woods Fund and John Ayers’s Leadership for Quality Education. Martin was just about to be named president of the Commercial Club of Chicago and its highly influential Civic Committee, Chicagoland’s most powerful private sector post.

  On Friday, March 12, after a Woods Fund board meeting, Barack asked to speak with Eden, and after their conversation, Martin dictated a memo to file memorializing it. Barack was “immensely talented” and “has long term political ambitions,” but he “is now thinking about . . . whether he wants to continue to fore
go the kind of opportunities and income that might be available in the private sector. In particular, he is thinking about the possibility of working for a foundation for several years, after which he would have built up some equity and might have an opportunity to re-enter elective politics. He has talked to Newt and me separately about his thinking” and “I had a long visit with him today.” The Joyce Foundation board was in the process of selecting a replacement for Debbie Leff, who four months earlier had been named president and CEO of Second Harvest, a national network of food banks that was the country’s sixth largest charity. In a few weeks, Joyce would appoint Cousteau Society executive Paula DiPerna as Leff’s successor, and that search plus his experience at Woods had given Barack a good sense of how financially influential foundation leadership roles could be.

  They also discussed Barack’s joining Sidley to do a very different and more remunerative sort of law than he did at Miner Barnhill. If Barack wants “to return to the practice essentially full time,” Martin wrote, “he ought to talk to us about the possibilities.” He noted that Barack “has had no significant trial experience. He is also interested in the possibility of a business practice, but recognizes he would have to learn the craft. I think it is very possible that he will call Tom Cole,” the head of Sidley’s corporate transactional practice, Martin noted.

  Two weeks after Barack’s conversation with Martin, he and Michelle flew to Boston to attend the wedding of Barack’s old Harvard friend Dan Rabinovitz. After the ceremony and reception, they had drinks with Rob and Lisa Fisher, and Barack raised the prospect of leaving the state Senate for a better-paying private-sector job. Michelle made clear her strong desire that Barack leave Springfield behind so she would not have to continue being a single parent three or four nights each week when the Senate was in session. Rob and Lisa went away with the impression that such a move was just as likely as Eden Martin’s memo documented.61

  On March 17, Illinois’s top news was that Governor Ryan had hesitantly signed off on the execution of Andrew Kokoraleis, who seventeen years earlier had participated in several mutilation murders. “The idea of pulling the trigger on a human life had Ryan really freaked out,” Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller reported, much to the amazement of the governor’s longtime friend Pate Philip, who could not fathom Ryan’s hesitation. “What the hell’s wrong with you, George?” an angry Philip asked Ryan over the phone as fellow senator Ed Petka looked on. Then Pate “literally just slammed the phone down.” Petka later said this exchange was “the beginning of the end” of Ryan and Philip’s friendship, but Ryan told the Chicago Tribune he was confident he “did the right thing” in letting the execution proceed. Meanwhile, the Tribune reported from Washington that defeated mayoral candidate Rep. Bobby Rush “hasn’t missed a beat” on his congressional work.

  Barack’s Senate schedule forced him to miss a Chicago Annenberg Challenge meeting where his friend Jim Reynolds was elected to the board, but as chairman Barack already had complained to education researchers Anthony Bryk and Mark Smylie that the board was not happy with the timeliness and usefulness of their evaluation reports, which CAC was liberally funding. Barack sought out coverage from the African American press for his SB 883, the Transportation to Work Act, telling one Chicago weekly that “one of the greatest barriers that welfare recipients face as they return to the workforce is a lack of adequate transportation,” because “only about 6 percent of welfare recipients own a car—and most jobs are not located on public transportation routes.” As he had argued for three years, “in order for an individual to successfully move from welfare to work, they must first be able to get to their place of employment, and secondly, if they have children, have the means to get them to day care.”

  On March 18, the Senate passed Barack’s modest SB 929, amending the Illinois Enterprise Zone Act to extend such tax abatement zones, of which half a dozen existed in Chicago’s low-income areas, from twenty to thirty years. Republican senators Christine Radogno and Steve Rauschenberger spoke against these urban tax breaks, but Barack’s bill passed easily, 45–10. Then Barack’s Judiciary Committee friend Kirk Dillard, who voted for it, filed a motion to reconsider, and the bill was brought back to the floor for reconsideration on Tuesday, March 23. Barack defended the zones’ economic development value, arguing that “they’ve had a track record of success throughout the state,” and that if Republicans were truly “interested in accountability, then we should be looking not just at enterprise zones, but at a whole host of corporate tax breaks that we provide throughout the state.” Barack’s Democratic colleague Bobby Molaro, a seven-year Senate veteran, questioned the motion to reconsider, saying he could not recall when a bill had been subject to such action, but it was clear that Pate Philip was against the Senate allowing a Democratic bill benefiting inner-city areas to become law. When the new tally was taken, all thirty-two Republicans—eighteen of whom had voted in favor of Barack’s bill five days earlier—voted to kill it, with two Democrats, Jimmy DeLeo and John Cullerton, who were no fans of Emil Jones, failing to vote. The outcome “was a shock,” Barack’s colleague James Clayborne recalled years later, because Barack “thought he had an agreement” and was “greatly disappointed” by the Republicans’ turnaround.

  Barack had far better success that same day with his check verification measure. “This bill was generated actually from a student of mine at the University of Chicago Law School,” he told his colleagues, and it passed unanimously, 58–0. The next day the Senate unanimously approved Barack’s job skills enhancement bill and a more modest one amending the Health Care Surrogate Act, but on Thursday, when an uncontroversial Republican bill, the Certified Capital Company Act, was brought to the floor, Barack gave fuller voice to the anger he was still nursing from two days earlier. “I can’t help but comment on the fact that the vast majority of these credits the other side of the aisle is going to be voting unanimously on . . . are no different from the enterprise zone legislation” the Republicans killed on Tuesday, and with no greater accountability provisions. “I do not understand why we are getting no objection from various members on the other side of the aisle who objected to my bill because of accountability, but I don’t hear a peep out of any of you with respect to” this one. “I would hate to feel cynical and think that it is only because of partisanship that the enterprise zone legislation has stalled and this bill and other bills . . . have not. . . . I would urge all of you on the other side of the aisle to seriously consider . . . treating all of the tax credit bills . . . in the same manner and evaluating them in the same process.”

  Steve Rauschenberger responded that he felt such “a great deal of discomfort” with this bill that he had met with the sponsors five times to ensure that adequate accountability provisions had been added to the legislation. “I understand Senator Obama’s concerned and frustrated with our action on enterprise zones,” but Rauschenberger urged passage of the pending bill. Barack replied that had he been given “the courtesy of the opportunity to amend, that would have occurred as well.” Barack’s Democratic colleague Pat Welch said, “I agree with Senator Obama, but I don’t think that agreeing with Senator Obama means that we shouldn’t support this bill.” Barack was alone in voting present, with the only two no votes cast by Democratic leader Emil Jones and his closest Senate friend, Bill Shaw.

  Later that afternoon, when a bill authorizing prosecution as an adult of anyone fifteen or older who was charged with aggravated battery with a firearm in a school zone, Barack again voiced his disappointment. Just a year earlier, this provision had been removed as part of the Juvenile Justice Reform Act because “there is really no proof or indication that automatic transfers and increased penalties and adult penalties for juvenile offenses have, in fact, proven to be more effective in reducing juvenile crime or cutting back on recidivism.” But now they were about to “increase penalties further for juveniles and try them further as adults.” Barack and four other African American senators all voted present as fifty-two of thei
r colleagues voted yes.62

  Barack’s unhappiness was also manifest in his unusually sour remarks when the Associated Press asked him about new U.S. senator Peter Fitzgerald, his former Springfield colleague. “Based on his record in the state Senate, I would not see Mr. Fitzgerald being a mover and shaker in Washington,” Barack said. His Democratic colleagues shared his woe over the session so far, and when Barack wrote his first Hyde Park Herald column of the year in early April, he emphasized how “taxpayers are often overpowered by large financial interests in Springfield,” such as payday loan companies that “gouge consumers.” He also expressed concern about a tuition tax credit proposal for parents with children in private and parochial schools, fearing that its $180 million cost could “potentially drain resources from our chronically underfunded public schools.” Barack complained to one reporter that “it’s hard to mobilize support for programs that cost money but benefit low-income folks,” and he remained disappointed about the lack of support for the Earned Income Tax Credit bill he had again introduced in early February. “I don’t understand the logic,” Barack told a journalist in a direct echo of John McKnight. “We take this money from people and then spend it on public services they might not need if they had more in their pockets.”

  Barack’s first two years in Springfield had convinced him of the underappreciated importance of state-level policy making, as he told his incipient think-tank colleagues on April 13, but that Tuesday was also runoff primary day, and Barack had become involved in two contentious aldermanic races. In the 15th Ward, he backed independent challenger Ted Thomas, an ACORN colleague of Barack’s longtime friends Madeline Talbott and Keith Kelleher, who defeated the Daley machine with 56 percent of the vote. In his home 5th Ward, Barack supported incumbent Barbara Holt, who recalled that he took “me around to speak with his neighbors in East View one Saturday.” But Holt’s energetic challenger, South Shore attorney Leslie Hairston, emphasized what the Tribune termed “questions about Holt’s responsiveness to residents’ gripes” amid complaints that Holt spent too much time at City Hall and too little in her ward. Holt led Hairston 44 to 30 percent in the initial primary, but the trio of eliminated candidates all endorsed Hairston and evidence grew that Mayor Daley’s forces were quietly mustering in support of Holt. Their involvement “may have been her kiss of death” in proudly independent Hyde Park, and on April 13 Hairston easily defeated Holt 55 to 45 percent.