Rising Star

by David Garrow

  On Sunday morning, Barack started the day at Grand Boulevard’s Liberty Baptist Church. Fourth Ward politico Al Kindle and journalist Ted McClelland, who had written a profile of Barack for the Chicago Reader four years earlier, were struck by how much more fluid and conversational a public speaker Barack was than he had been during his unsuccessful congressional race. McClelland wondered what to make of “a campaigner whose persona changed so drastically in four years,” but even one-on-one, Barack seemed different from four years earlier. McClelland recalled that “the aloofness was gone” and “he didn’t mention Harvard once. . . . 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.”

  Others who had heard Barack speak over the years also noted how much more relaxed and self-confident he was now. “The more he campaigned, the more natural he got at it and the more disciplined he got at it,” AFSCME and Citizen Action veteran John Cameron explained. “This whole ‘I’m the guy, I’m Mr. Cool, you gotta be with me’ kind of stuff all disappeared.” Dan Hynes saw it too. As the race progressed, “the more confidence he had, and it showed in his speaking style and the way he interacted with people.” Kevin Watson, who was squiring Barack to countless South Side barbershops, beauty salons, and nightclubs, watched Barack change before his very eyes. “You could see him more and more relaxing,” Kevin explained. “I can see it happening, and I can feel it happening. . . . It was almost like he was turning into something other than what he was . . . something that is bigger than him.”

  U of C graduate student Warren Chain had volunteered a lot during Barack’s congressional run, believing he was a “good guy” though a “very poor” public speaker. Chain kept in touch briefly, visiting Barack at Miner Barnhill, and then “didn’t see him for two or three years” before running into him at the Walgreens Pharmacy on 55th Street, just a few blocks from East View, during the Senate campaign. He thought Barack “had a different look in his eye, a different energy” than three years earlier. “He was just so intense.” People who had known Barack more than a decade earlier also noticed a change. Old organizing colleague David Kindler attended an Arab American–hosted reception for Barack during the Senate race and found him “kind of disappointing” because he “wasn’t the candid Barack” of years past and was now “a little bit more cagey.” Among themselves, Barack’s organizer friends mourned how different he was from years earlier, when “the wall was down” and “when he was far less guarded and before the drawbridge to his feelings went up.” Ali Abunimah, Mona and Rashid Khalidi’s Arab American Action Network colleague, felt similarly after Barack encouraged him, “Keep up the good work!” while offering an apology. “I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now,” Abunimah recalled Barack telling him, “but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down, I can be more up front.”52

  As a full-time candidate, Barack’s schedule was filled with editorial board meetings and media interviews. He told the Daily Herald “that for lesbians and gays, it’s not just the marriage issue, it’s also the moral issue of recognition and acceptance,” but he did not want to “shove the issue” forward rather than stress “the principle of non-discrimination.” To WBEZ’s Steve Edwards, Barack bragged about his basketball talent while admitting that “my coat is in shreds. It’s an embarrassment to my wife.” WBBM’s weekly automated SurveyUSA poll showed Blair Hull with a significant 29 to 19 percent lead over Barack and Dan Hynes, thanks to 44 percent support downstate. Barack “has just 46 percent of black voters,” Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller reported with amazement. That number would surely rise, and Barack’s “new yard signs in black neighborhoods feature his photo.” Barack “is the only candidate in this race with any real charisma, which could help give his campaign a late spark” once he started airing TV ads. But “Hull’s coming deluge means that Hynes almost has to go negative on the guy,” though “Hynes has limited funds. . . . If Hynes doesn’t do something about Hull’s ascension, then Hynes is toast.”

  By the second week of February, Barack’s campaign was broadcasting several new radio ads. In one, Barack was the only voice:

  This is state senator Barack Obama. I’m running for the United States Senate, and I want to tell you why. We’re spending billions of dollars in Iraq while millions in our own country are out of work. Our health care system’s collapsing. Our schools don’t have the support they need. But too many in Congress have been afraid to stand up to George Bush and his destructive policies. Too many have let him have his way, and now our country and our community are paying the price. I’m a Democrat fighting for an America where anyone who wants to work can find a job, where everyone gets the health care they need, and every single child gets the chance they deserve. I want to make our voices heard in the United States Senate. This is Barack Obama and I approve this message because I hope you’ll join me in this movement. Please register to vote. If you want to volunteer, call my headquarters at 312-427-6300. Together, we can make history and send a message of hope and change.

  On black radio stations, Barack’s campaign deployed a pair of new ads. In one, entitled “Champion,” Operation PUSH’s Rev. Willie Barrow had “an important message for our community. February 17th is the last day to register for the primary election. And on that primary ballot is a champion for our community . . . state senator Barack Obama . . . a husband, a father, and a leader in his church.” Barrow signed off “urging you to join the movement.” A second featured Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.:

  A generation ago, our parents marched, bled and died to secure our civil rights. But equal opportunity, it’s still an unfulfilled promise. Now we can send a powerful message of change to Washington by electing state senator Barack Obama to the United States Senate. Obama has spent his life knocking down barriers. He made history as the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, but instead of cashing in, he has chosen a life of public service. In Chicago, he led a registration drive that helped elect Bill Clinton and Carol Moseley Braun. In Springfield, Obama’s passed laws extending health care to uninsured children, for the videotaping of police interrogations and new curbs on racial profiling. What a difference it would make to have Barack Obama in the United States Senate. He’ll hold America to its promise for all of us.

  “This is Barack Obama, and I approve this message to ask for your vote on March 16th.” Jackson then urged listeners to “Join the movement! Barack Obama for Senate” before Barack said, “Paid for by Obama for Illinois Inc.”

  Barack’s own staff was becoming aware that his prospects were looking up. “Things start to build, and it really did start to feel like a campaign and not a job,” events coordinator Kaleshia Page recalled. Jim Cauley was pushing to have the funds to make as big a late TV buy as possible, but among the campaign’s African American staffers, unspoken disquiet slowly increased. Barack had pressed Cauley not to allow the staff to become too white, but even so, strategy discussions with Barack’s all-white, all-male team of consultants often left Audra Wilson and Pam Smith, the campaign’s two senior black women, feeling slighted. “If this is considered the base, you’ve got to listen to us,” Audra finally remarked. The disagreements reached a crescendo over whether the campaign should devote upward of $35,000 to billboard advertising aimed at African American drivers. Kevin Watson argued that it was essential to show Barack and Michelle in order to send the message that “this is a light-skinned African American marrying somebody darker.” Barack agreed. “We need to do billboards,” he told Cauley, but Jimmy resisted: “No we don’t.” “Jim, I’m just telling you, if they think I’ve got a white wife, the boogie shit sticks,” Barack replied. “He’d just get up in my face,” Jimmy remembered, but Axelrod and the other consultants sided with Cauley. “Barack, there are two people in this room who have won major African American campaigns, and you’re not one of them,” Joe McLean recounted Axelrod stating.

  Simila
r tensions arose when top supporters Jim Reynolds, Marty Nesbitt, and Valerie Jarrett pressed Barack about why the campaign was not yet running television ads. “We’ve got to go up on TV, Jim. Even if it’s a hundred grand, we’ve got to go up,” Barack told Cauley. Again the consultants supported Cauley. “Barack is getting impatient,” John Kupper recounted, and “we had to continue to persuade him. . . . ‘We have a strategy here . . . we have to hold this money till the end, when it matters.’” Barack conceded on the television issue, but in the end Kevin Watson did prevail on billboards. “Jimmy was a hero,” Kupper explained. “We needed somebody who was strong enough to stand up” to pressure, “and sometimes stand up to the candidate,” and “to a very large extent, Jimmy did.”

  By February 16, Barack had been endorsed by two more important north suburban Democratic Party groups, drawing 78 percent support in New Trier Township and 60 percent in Northfield. David Axelrod scheduled video photo shoots with Barack, his family, Jesse Jackson Jr., and Jan Schakowsky at Marty Nesbitt’s Kenwood home on February 17 as the timeline for producing Barack’s initial TV spots closed in. Axelrod had a draft script in hand for their debut ad, but Barack hesitated after his first read-through, caviling at its final phrase, “Yes we can.” “Is that too corny?” Barack asked. David explained his thinking, but Barack sought Michelle’s reaction. “Miche, what do you think?” “Not corny,” she replied, and the taping proceeded.

  Meanwhile, attention in the race shifted to questions about new front-runner Blair Hull. In the Chicago Tribune’s February 15 profile, headlined “Political Novice Hull Uneasy in Spotlight,” reporter David Mendell portrayed Hull’s efforts to make himself into a political candidate. “I forgot to tell them I served in the army and taught school. I have to remember these things,” Hull told himself after his endorsement interview at the Rockford Register Star. As an “introverted personality, Hull is anything but a natural,” Mendell stated, despite Hull’s investment of almost $24 million of his own money. Only at the end did Mendell mention that Hull, who had divorced his first wife of almost thirty years in 1994, had then twice married and been divorced from Brenda Sexton. Indeed, “in 1998, Sexton filed [for] an order of protection against him, public records show,” Mendell revealed. Chris Mather from Dan Hynes’s campaign later acknowledged that she had “worked for months to make that happen,” but when Mendell asked Hull about what had occurred, he said only that the second divorce was “contentious,” but that he and Sexton were now friends.

  Two days later, Chicago Sun-Times gossip columnist Michael Sneed reported that Hull and Sexton had shown up together at an evening fund-raiser, news that did not surprise Hull’s campaign staff, who believed they were weathering the storm. Then an Eric Zorn column in Thursday’s Tribune headlined “Public Entitled to Know About Hull’s History” quoted the candidate as saying, “I won’t talk about it. I’m not available to talk about my personal life.” Zorn argued that “Hull’s candidacy has given us a right to know,” and that evening on CBS Channel 2’s local newscast, reporter Mike Flannery stated that an order of protection “usually requires evidence of domestic abuse.” As with Mendell and Zorn, Hull had turned aside Flannery’s questions too, even when Flannery probingly asked whether Hull had ever threatened Sexton with violence. “This really doesn’t play a role in the Senate race” because “it’s a private matter,” Hull responded. Flannery got Sexton on the phone, who said, “I’ll leave it in Blair’s hands. . . . He’s the one running for office.” Flannery again suggestively asked about any threats of violence, but Sexton replied, “I’ve said all I’m going to say.”53

  David Mendell upped the pressure, reporting in Saturday’s paper that Sexton had “obtained two orders of protection” against Hull. With top consultant Rick Ridder wondering “how long we can stonewall this,” Hull volunteered what the one publicly obtainable document would indicate. “The police report from that night says that I hit her shin.” Hull added, “I regret those months, and that night in particular, as well as the legal posturing that resulted. Most importantly, Brenda and I are now friends.”

  Barack’s first TV ad was scheduled to begin running in the Chicago media market on Monday, February 23, a week earlier than initially planned, thanks to his campaign’s better-than-expected fund-raising. Barack lost his greatest press champion when Sun-Times political columnist Steve Neal committed suicide at age fifty-four, but on Sunday, Barack received another highly valued union endorsement when Teamsters Local 705, whose twenty-one thousand members made it the state’s largest, backed his candidacy. With new poll numbers landing almost daily, there now was no question that Blair Hull’s massive paid media campaign had vaulted him into the lead. An automated Daily Southtown poll showed Hull with 27 percent, and Barack and Dan Hynes trailing badly with 17 percent apiece. A Roosevelt University poll had Hull at 27, Hynes at 21, and Barack at 14 percent, while the Tribune showed Hull with 24, Barack with 15, and Hynes with only 11. Hull’s name recognition was now at 63 percent, Hynes at only 54, and Barack a dismal 32, although 34 percent of likely Democratic voters remained undecided.

  Capitol Fax’s Rich Miller warned that many top Democrats “worry that a Hull win could be a disaster this fall” if damaging information emerged postprimary. Like Rick Ridder, Hull media consultant Anita Dunn and campaign manager Mike Henry knew how widespread the rumors were about Hull’s 1998 behavior toward Brenda Sexton. The trio had long believed, as Dunn put it, that “nobody would feel they had to use those against us unless they thought that Blair was a real threat to win the primary.” But now “Blair had gone into the lead in public polling, so it was tick, tick, tick,” and “people are going to come after us,” Henry agreed.

  A little before 3:00 P.M. on Sunday afternoon, February 22, Carbondale City Council member Sheila Simon arrived at the Akkineni family’s home at 506 Midwest Club Parkway in suburban Oakbrook. Sheila’s day job as a law teacher at Southern Illinois University had her in Chicagoland for a domestic violence conference, and weeks earlier David Axelrod had telephoned her to say, “We’d like to do something where you would talk about how your dad was going to endorse Barack.” Sheila was noncommittal. “My hesitancy was I didn’t want to get involved in saying what would my dad have done,” and “David understood that,” but in a second call, Axelrod asked, “How about you just talk about what your dad and Barack worked on?” Sheila agreed, and David sent her a draft script that Sheila was 99 percent happy with. “The language that David proposed was so really on target,” and “the only thing I needed to change” was deleting one word calling her dad “excellent” because it felt “a little boastful for me to say that.”

  Roopa Akkineni was a good friend of Madhuri Kommareddi, the Northwestern senior who was doing most of the campaign scheduling, and Axelrod had a full crew plus a teleprompter on hand, awaiting Sheila’s arrival. “You have great brows. I’m just removing the distractions,” the makeup artist told Sheila. The taping “took a long time,” because “we did it so many times,” Sheila remembered. “David would say, ‘Well, this time emphasize this word a little bit more,’” or “‘be a little more cheery when you talk about the death penalty.’ ‘David, give me a break,’” Sheila responded, but by afternoon’s end Barack’s second TV ad was ready for final editing and production.

  On Monday, Barack’s first thirty-second spot, entitled “Yes,” was broadcast. It began with Barack in a suit and tie directly addressing the camera. “They said an African American had never led the Harvard Law Review,” as the video shifted first to a 1990 photo of Barack and then to an image of the February 6, 1990, New York Times story: “First Black Elected to Head Harvard’s Law Review.” Then back to Barack: “In the state Senate, they said we couldn’t force insurance companies to cover routine mammograms, but we did,” in a 2001 bill that won unanimous passage in the Senate and the House but for which Barack was not among its thirteen senatorial sponsors. Barack reappeared. “They said we couldn’t find the money to cover uninsured children, or
give tax relief to the working poor, or pass new laws to stop wrongful executions, but I have,” as the video flashed through a trio of graphics citing to Barack’s 2003 KidCare, EITC, and videotaping bills. Then Barack returned. “Now they say we can’t change Washington? I’m Barack Obama. I’m running for the United States Senate, and I approve this message to say Yes We Can.”54

  On Monday evening, all of the Democratic Senate candidates assembled in Springfield for a second, one-hour radio debate. When Blair Hull called himself “an outspoken opponent” of the Iraq war, Barack objected. “The fact of the matter is, Blair, that you were silent when these decisions were being made. And you didn’t end up being outspoken about it until well after the war had been completed, to the extent that it’s been completed. . . . And now you’re sending out mailings saying you were a strong opponent of the war. You were AWOL on this issue. And that’s important . . . because Illinois voters deserve to know whether or not their U.S. senator is going to duck issues or whether he’s going to be up front on issues.”

  Hull responded by saying that Joyce Washington, Nancy Skinner, and Gery Chico had also opposed the war, but Barack pressed his attack. “At what stage did you make a statement suggesting you were opposed to it? On your Web site, there was no mention of it. We made a joint appearance in front of the Champaign County Democrats in which you didn’t utter a peep about it. I give credit to people like Dan Hynes and Maria [Pappas], who were consistent in saying they were supportive of it. . . . I disagree with them . . . but I admire the fact that they did take a consistent position on it.” That backhanded compliment did Hynes no favor, but Barack’s energetic critique gave Pappas an opening. “Excuse me, you want to talk about ducking issues, Mr. Obama. Where were you in Springfield when there were six prochoice votes called? . . . But you were not there to vote. Let’s not talk about who ducked issues.” Barack said he expected voters to look at “the totality of your record and your life,” and after the debate, reporters sought further answers from Blair Hull. “Unfortunately, there are contentious divorces, and I don’t believe this really affects the kind of senator I’m going to be,” Hull said.