Believer: My Forty Years in Politics

by David Axelrod

  Another early mentor was Don Rose, a local writer, newspaper publisher, and political activist from the Hyde Park area with deep roots in the civil rights and antiwar movements. By the time I met him, Rose’s life had had many acts. As a young man in the 1950s, he was a jazz trumpeter and heroin addict. By the ’60s, he had cleaned up, and served as Martin Luther King Jr.’s press secretary during the reverend’s 1966 marches for open housing in Chicago. (King claimed that the racism he encountered in Chicago was more “hateful” than anything he had encountered in the South.) Rose had also served as the spokesman for the Chicago Seven, the eclectic crew of hippies, yippies, and leftist lawyers who led the antiwar protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Don lays claim to the iconic line chanted by the protesters as the Chicago police advanced: “The whole world is watching!”

  In the 1970s, Don took on yet another incarnation, this time as a part-time political consultant and ad maker. Outraged by the Black Panther slayings and committed to being a burr under Daley’s saddle, he orchestrated the upset election of a former FBI agent, Bernard Carey, for state’s attorney. Carey was a Republican, but in the topsy-turvy world of Daley’s Chicago, liberals often supported reform-minded Republicans for local office. And Don was in the forefront of those fights.

  The bearded, biting Rose also was a deft writer, with an encyclopedic knowledge of Chicago politics. He was a fixture at the preferred watering holes of Chicago’s coolest journalists—Royko, Studs Terkel, and others—many of whom shared Don’s political leanings, admired him as a talent, and revered him as a source.

  Shortly after taking on the Herald column, I called Rose cold and asked him to critique my work and to offer guidance. He generously did so except during one period in 1975, when he felt I was insufficiently supportive of one of his candidates.

  “You’re letting yourself be used,” he bellowed in fury over the phone one day. By the following year, though, Don had forgiven me. In fact, it was his letter of recommendation in which he pointedly recalled that we “had not always agreed” that, in 1976, helped secure me a coveted summer internship at the Chicago Tribune.

  A City Council race to replace the venerated Despres, which was hotly contested, gave me the opportunity to earn my spurs with some original investigative reporting.

  There were four candidates in the race, three African Americans and a white man named Ross Lathrop, who had no political involvement in the community prior to the race, but who nevertheless seemed to be gaining traction. Though Lathrop postured himself as an independent candidate, I began to suspect that Korshak and the machine Democrats had put him up for the seat, hoping to keep it in friendly hands if the African American candidates split the black vote. Korshak, of course, denied this.

  Lathrop won the election, but when his campaign finance disclosure appeared months later, I became suspicious about a series of large contributions that had all come in during a five-day period from eight construction and engineering contractors, only one of whom listed an address in the ward. I suspected that the donations were procured by Mike Igoe, a Korshak lieutenant rumored to be in line to become the next ward committeeman. Igoe’s day job was secretary of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, through whose office all county contracts passed before final approval.

  I spent a day at the county building, looking for matches between Lathrop’s donors and county contracts. After cutting through the red tape designed to discourage such foraging, I hit the mother lode. “Bingo,” I muttered to myself. “Every single one.”

  Among them, Lathrop’s donors had received nearly thirty million dollars in county contracts, all of which passed through Igoe. When I called them, a few even acknowledged that they could not have distinguished Lathrop from a bale of hay. Igoe fessed up that he had solicited the donations on Lathrop’s behalf.

  There was nothing illegal, or even unusual, about the donations—certainly not in the Wild, Wild West of Chicago and Cook County—but they called into question Lathrop’s credentials as a self-styled reformer, and tied him to the Democratic organization. Though this wasn’t an earthshaking story, it was thrilling for me to pursue a hunch, do the sometimes tedious reporting, and ultimately reveal something meaningful to the public.

  Of course, the time I spent in a dark room reviewing records at the County Building was time I wasn’t spending in class or at the library. I wish I could retake some of the courses I sprinted through then, doing only enough work to get by with decent grades. The education I was offered was far better than the one for which I settled. But I was a young man in a big hurry. I had found a calling, and the best preparation for it was on the street, not in the classroom.

  I loved politics, and I loved reporting, but I pursued journalism relentlessly for another reason.

  In the spring of 1974, I got an unusual call from my dad. We spoke relatively often, but almost always because I’d called him for advice or solace, or to ask for a few bucks to tide me over. He rarely phoned me, and his message had a strange, parting tone.

  “Whatever happens, I know now that you and your sister are going to do very well in life,” he said. “I want you to know I am so proud of you both, and the people you’ve become.”

  I didn’t know what had prompted the call and, though pleased by his praise, didn’t think much about it.

  A few days later, there was a knock on the door of the shabby off-campus apartment I shared with two others. My roommate Daniel Nugent, a longhaired, guitar-playing anthropology student from Tucson, answered the door.

  “My name is Gardner, Chicago Police,” said the man on the other side of it. “I’m looking for David Axelrod. Is he home?”

  Daniel hesitated. It was, after all, the ’70s. The apartment we lived in was once known as Happy House, for some of the unwholesome frivolity that took place there, and such unannounced visits by police were rarely good news. The officer persisted. “Please, son,” he said gently. “I have something I have to tell him.”

  I overheard the conversation and nodded at Daniel, who reluctantly opened the door and waved the officer into the darkened foyer. From the living room, I could hear the haunting guitar instrumental “Jessica,” by the Allman Brothers, still playing on the turntable.

  “Are you David?”

  I said I was.

  “Is your father Joseph Axelrod?”

  The question itself hinted at something awful.

  “David, we just got a call from New York City. The NYPD. They found your dad in his apartment. They think it was a suicide. They need you to go home to identify his body.”

  “Oh God,” Daniel said softly.

  The Allman Brothers continued to play as the three of us stood in silence for a long moment.

  Officer Gardner gave me a contact at the NYPD, grasped my shoulder, and shook my hand. “I’m so sorry to have to bring you this news, son.”

  I thanked him, but I didn’t cry. Not then. I don’t remember saying much of anything at all. I didn’t ask many questions. I heard his words but I couldn’t quite grasp them. I was numb, dazed.

  I called my mother because I didn’t know what else to do.

  “What?” she screamed into the phone. “Are they sure? I can’t believe it. Are they sure, Dave?”

  I asked her to tell my sister.

  I hung up, and my thoughts turned to that last phone call, which suddenly made sense. My dad knew then that he was going to kill himself. When he said he was sure my sister and I would do well in life, he knew he would not be there to see it. He was calling to say good-bye.

  Oh, how I wished I had had the chance to tell him how much he meant to me. There was no one I loved more. I hoped he knew that—but if he did, I thought, then why had he left me?

  Whenever I was hurting or anxious and felt as if there were nowhere else to turn, Dad was there for me with soothing, sensible advice and a warm, loving, always comforting smile. �
��It’ll be all right, boy,” he would tell me. “It’ll be better tomorrow.” And it almost always was, but would it now? Would it ever?

  I returned to New York and joined my sister to deal with the grim business of funeral arrangements. Mercifully, a family friend agreed to spare me by identifying the body. Many of Dad’s patients and former patients came to his funeral, and more than a few told Joan and me how he had saved their lives and how much they would miss this warm, graceful man. I wished he could have heard their tearful tributes and the difference he had made in their lives.

  He didn’t leave a note, but there was no doubt that the financial burdens Dad had hinted at the previous summer were a constant concern. He had taken on the extra work doing testing at the settlement house, but had performed badly and was fired, evidence that this bright, talented man was no longer quite himself. I’ll never know the whole story, but I believe it was this desperation coupled with a sense of failure that drove Dad to hang himself in the sterile little studio apartment in Midtown where he and I had spent so many nights.

  Dad left me seventeen thousand dollars, an old Plymouth Fury, and a broken heart. I was angry with myself for missing the clues, and angry with him for not seeking help. A mental health professional, he had saved the lives of others, but was apparently incapable of reaching out to save his own.

  For years after his death, the anniversary announced itself to me through bouts of depression and self-doubt. What did it say about my fate that the man I so admired could end up broke and alone, overcome by feelings of failure?

  In the sorrowful and confusing aftermath of my dad’s death, however, the strongest sentiment I felt was that my childhood was over.

  My father was dead. My mother, distant. I was completely on my own.

  THREE

  DEADLINE DAVE

  TWO DAYS AFTER I graduated from college, in June 1976, I stood on Michigan Avenue just north of the Chicago River, waiting anxiously for the massive clock on the Wrigley Building to strike nine. Across the street stood the imposing, neo-Gothic Tribune Tower, where I was about to begin my summer internship. Sporty in a brand-new suit—one of two I had bought to upgrade my threadbare student wardrobe—I leaned against a light pole, contemplating the whirlwind three months leading up to that moment.

  It was an extraordinary break to win a Tribune internship, for which several hundred students from across the country had competed—but it was an absolute miracle that I had graduated in time to take advantage of it.

  Years of neglecting my studies finally had caught up with me. The spring my father died, I was forced to take some incompletes so I could return to New York for the funeral and aftermath. And they wouldn’t be the last.

  All the writing and reporting I had done had earned me the shot at the Tribune, but in order to focus on journalism, I kept deferring classwork. By the time the final quarter rolled around, I had to finish five incompletes, along with four other courses, in order to graduate and get that chance to prove that I belonged in a newsroom.

  At the start of my final quarter, the registrar, who, in my memory, was a misanthropic character worthy of Dickens, seemed to take perverse pleasure in telling me that there was no way I could complete the academic gauntlet in time.

  “Mr. Axelrod,” he said, “if I were you, I’d plan on summer school.”

  “Not a chance,” I replied. “I have an internship waiting for me at the Chicago Tribune, and I am not going to summer school. I’m finishing. Wait and see.”

  The next ten weeks were a blur. Little by little, I knocked off the load, but I literally worked around the clock. I remember having to negotiate with one professor who accused me of plagiarizing my final paper.

  “Are you kidding me?” I asked, incredulous at the slander. I was bone tired, and final grades were due that day. “I could have plagiarized,” I told him. “A lot of my friends who have taken your course offered me their papers. But I wanted to do my own work.”

  Still, he wouldn’t budge. “No one who attended my class regularly could have written this paper,” he said. “It’s way off topic.”

  “Well,” I replied slowly, “I confess I may not have been the most regular attendee. But this is my work. And, Professor, I have to graduate. I have an internship at the Chicago Tribune this summer. I can’t go to summer school.”

  The professor stared hard at me, stroked his chin, and changed the F to a D—the only one I received during my four years at the university. It was just enough for me to get by.

  I strode triumphantly into the registrar’s office with my final grade. He looked over my transcript glumly, and then a small, sadistic smile curled up on his face.

  “Wait one minute, Mr. Axelrod,” he said, barely able to contain his joy. “It says here you never passed your freshman swimming requirement. If you don’t pass the test by three p.m., you won’t be graduating with your class.”

  I looked at the clock. It was almost one.

  Now, I have never been a great swimmer, and the quarter when I entered the U of C, when one would customarily have done a stint in the pool, I was given a pass because I was recovering from mononucleosis.

  So I sprinted across campus to the gym, found a coach who could administer the test, and explained my dilemma. “And if I start to drown, please let me go,” I told him, without a trace of humor. “I just don’t want to explain to my family and friends that I’m not graduating because I flunked the freshman swimming test.” I stripped down and paddled my way through five laps in positions that were varied enough to qualify as separate “strokes”—at least in the eyes of a sympathetic coach. He called in the news to the registrar, and I staggered off to the main quadrangle of the campus and collapsed in a triumphant heap.

  Four days later I was on Michigan Avenue, experiencing that adrenaline rush as I waited for the top of the hour to report to the City Desk for my first day at the Trib. I didn’t want to be too early, and appear overeager, but I also didn’t want to be late, and seem indifferent. So at nine sharp, I crossed the street, took an elevator to the fourth floor, and entered a time warp.

  The cavernous, two-story Tribune newsroom was essentially the same as it had been for generations, a vast sea of desks, phones, and typewriters framed by heavy doors and trim of dark wood. On one wall hung a gigantic reproduction of “Injun Summer,” an anachronistic tribute to autumn, drawn by famed Tribune cartoonist John T. McCutcheon in 1907, and then republished by the paper every fall from 1912 onward (until 1992, when political correctness and good taste relegated the once-celebrated but vaguely racist classic to the archives). On other walls, huge clocks marked the time in Chicago and in Washington and other world capitals. Above the newsroom was an observation window, from which visitors could look down on the frenzy. And by nine, the action was stirring, as dayside reporters checked in for their assignments.

  I was greeted by Sheila Wolfe, the day city editor and intern coordinator, who had stuck her neck out by hiring me over a flood of impressive applicants from America’s leading journalism schools. In an intern class of nine, I was the lowly claimer among highly trained thoroughbreds. Now, I thought, she looked slightly dyspeptic as she considered her long-shot bet. “You ready?” she asked as she led me over to the City Desk to introduce me around.

  The first to extend his hand was Bernie Judge, the young, dark-haired city editor, who would become a great mentor and a lifelong friend. Bernie was a veteran of the City News Bureau, a local wire service with a grand history in Chicago’s front-page lore. In fact, the playwright Charles MacArthur, who coauthored the hit Broadway comedy The Front Page, got his start there, as did Royko, Seymour Hersh, and a raft of other celebrated reporters and writers. On Bernie’s wall hung a quote from A. A. Dornfeld, the longtime night city editor of City News, that summed up the wire service’s gestalt: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out!” Translation: get it right!

  Sheila turne
d me over to Don Agrella, the crusty assignment editor. Agrella had spent his entire career working for Chicago newspapers, as had his brothers Chris and Joe. Between them, they had more than a century of experience. I would quickly learn that when Agrella shouted your name—followed by a “hat and coat!”—it meant there was breaking news somewhere in the city, and you had better get a move on it.

  In our first encounter, he looked a little bemused. “Nice suit,” he said, with the smile of the veteran gently hazing a rookie. “But it’s going to get a little dirty. There was a tornado in Lemont last night. Lots of damage. I’m sending you out with Jeff Lyon.”

  Lyon, a second-generation reporter and one of the paper’s star writers, showed up a few minutes later, appropriately dressed in blue jeans and a Hawaiian print shirt. He was my Sherpa as we tromped through the muddy, littered streets of Lemont, and then visited a local hospital, looking for victims. After a few hours, we called our notes in, and a rewrite man turned those facts into a coherent narrative. Rewrite men, I learned, were the anonymous heroes in journalism’s trenches. By the time we returned, there was a story with Jeff’s and my bylines in the afternoon editions. Damn, I thought. Whole new world.

  The next day, Agrella’s hazing continued. That summer, Frank Fitzsimmons, the mobbed-up Teamsters president, had proposed obscenely large pay raises for himself and other top union officials. Agrella had an idea. “Hey, kid,” he said, calling me over to the desk. “Why don’t you go out and find some Teamsters and see how they feel about Fitzsimmons giving himself a raise.”

  I had no clue where to start, but also no inclination to ask. Agrella smelled my fear. He directed me to a set of loading docks on the Southwest Side, where he said I would find a bunch of Teamsters packing or unpacking trucks. What he didn’t mention was the obvious: regardless of their feelings, Teamsters were not terribly eager to be quoted speaking disparagingly of the guy at the top. They were angry about the pay raise, but not enough to risk life and limb.