The Player at Bat

Making His Way

It is also a Chicago thing. To a jaundiced eye from the East, Carl Sandburg's "city of big shoulders" is an unexpected locus of optimism -- a community whose leading citizens believe fervently in civic progress and the ameliorative power of politics. "Chicago is a place where the impossible becomes possible," argues Marilyn Katz, a public relations consultant and political operative who has worked with Axelrod for 30 years. "We don't have New York cynicism."

Axelrod doesn't either, despite his Manhattan origins. His friend David Wilhelm, former chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a sometime resident of the Windy City, says Axelrod has played an important role in diminishing the racial tensions that once racked Chicago, first by helping Harold Washington, the city's first (and still only) black mayor, elected with the votes of white liberals, then by helping Rich Daley, the mayor today and the recipient of large numbers of black votes -- including a majority of them in last year's reelection campaign, when both of Daley's opponents were black. Daley's Chicago is booming, though chronic urban problems like weak schools and crime have not been solved. "The part of his career he is most proud of," says Axelrod's sister, Joan, who is six years older than he, "is his real commitment to politicians who he believes can make a difference."

Axelrod first came to Chicago to attend its famous university in the Hyde Park neighborhood on the South Side. He had been admitted to Columbia in New York and the University of Chicago. "My folks both thought it would be good to get away from New York and be on my own," he remembers. "I didn't disagree." Chicago soon became another of his enthusiasms.

At the university he studied political science and wrote for the Chicago Maroon, the school's daily paper. His specialty was politics, particularly South Side politics. Eugene "Chip" Forrester, another member of the Class of 1977 on the Maroon, remembers Axelrod as an adventurous student reporter who burrowed into the unfamiliar South Side terrain that produced Harold Washington, Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.), Jesse Jackson and other African American politicos. While still an undergraduate he became a political columnist for the Hyde Park Herald, a community weekly, then got an internship with the Chicago Tribune. He was so successful that the Tribune put him on its reporting staff right after he graduated in 1977.

Axelrod's beloved father, a victim of depression, had taken his own life three years earlier, when Axelrod was 19. "I was largely on my own out here," he says. "I kind of grew up at the newspaper, covering the city. I worked nights, covered every manner of disaster, murder and mayhem. Little by little I got to know the city really well, and I fell in love with it. Then I fell in love with a woman from the city, and it was very clear to me that this is where I wanted to be."

Axelrod met Susan Landau playing basketball in a coed league in Hyde Park. Her father was a medical professor at the university. She and Axelrod married in 1979.

Axelrod's career at the Tribune flourished. He became a local political columnist while still in his 20s. But according to his friend Sam Smith, who covered politics with Axelrod before becoming a sportswriter, "David was better than the people above him," and felt his ambitions would be frustrated. So in 1984, when a professorial, liberal Illinois congressman named Paul Simon won the Democratic nomination to run for the Senate against Charles Percy, a three-term Republican incumbent, he was able to persuade Axelrod to become his press secretary.

Switching sides from reporter to participant suited Axelrod. He loved the competition, and he preferred fighting in the arena to a seat in the bleachers. After a shake-up in the Simon campaign, Axelrod found himself -- at 28 -- running all campaign communications. David Wilhelm, then 27, was the campaign manager. With the help of anti-Percy money and commercials from pro-Israel groups angry with the senator's support for selling military aircraft to Saudi Arabia, Simon won. Axelrod thought he had helped a smart, good man to the Senate -- he was a Simon fan.

From there he went into business as a political consultant. Soon Democratic hopefuls were streaming to his door; he made a lot of money. He became famous for ingenious campaign commercials that solved big political problems for his clients.

One was Rahm Emanuel, the veteran of the Clinton White House who returned home to Chicago to run for the House of Representatives in 2002. Opponents called him a carpetbagger and an elitist without roots in the city. Axelrod produced a 30-second spot featuring a Chicago police sergeant named Les Smulevitz, who sat in a diner and spoke into the camera: "I've been a Chicago police officer for a long time, and I've seen it all -- the guns, the gangs, the drugs . . . ." He then touted Emanuel, noting the crime-fighting role he had played in the Clinton White House. "That's why the Fraternal Order of Police and Chicago firefighters back Rahm Emanuel for Congress," Smulevitz said. "And I'd tell you that even if I weren't his uncle." The commercial ended with a photo of uniformed uncle with his arm around his candidate nephew. Emanuel won easily.

Axelrod became "a pillar of the community," in the words of Wilhelm. Axelrod and his wife created Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy, a foundation to sponsor research into the disease that had disabled their first child, a daughter named Lauren, now 26. (They also have two sons.) They have raised more than $9 million, with help from numerous politicians, including Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Axelrod concluded years ago that he should never leave Chicago, and should particularly resist the temptation to move to Washington, where most big-time political consultants work and live. He thought, "I might be better at what I do if I lived somewhere where they didn't talk about the Federal Register over dinner." He also liked his role in Chicago, where instead of seeking business, he can now wait for politicians to come to him.