Believer: My Forty Years in Politics (11 page)

Less than six months out of the newspaper business, I had survived my baptism of fire. Well, a lot more than survived. A campaign I led had defied the betting odds and campaign orthodoxies to elect a very good man and someone in whom I deeply believed. And for all the bashing back and forth, we won in the end by appealing to hope; by projecting the ideal of one American community in which everyone gets a fair shot. That’s what Simon believed, and by forthrightly expressing it, he defeated not just an opponent on the ballot, but also the cynical political calculus of the day.

It was a heady moment, but one I couldn’t share with the person closest to me. Susan was home with our two infants, Lauren and Michael, who had barely seen their dad in months—and they wouldn’t for another two days. Lauren was struggling with the impact of her epilepsy; Mike, for his fair share of attention; and Susan was exhausted and ground down. Yet instead of going home for a long-planned, postelection dinner with my family, I stayed downtown and spent the next day and night celebrating with colleagues and taking media bows.

My memories of my exhilarating breakthrough in politics—the heady rookie-of-the-year notions I entertained—are tempered by my embarrassment and shame over how completely self-absorbed I was at that moment. I am sure that, that night, Susan was recalling Jeanne Simon’s admonition about life in politics and wondering if our marriage would survive. It only did because of her forbearance and determination to make it work.

Now I had to decide what to do next.

I had agreed, when I joined the Simon campaign, to become the vice president of an up-and-coming Chicago public relations firm, Jasculca Terman and Associates, which had been founded by two good friends who were veterans of the Carter-Mondale administration. Their offer gave me the security to leave the
Tribune
, knowing I would have a job after the campaign. Yet when the campaign ended, I knew that corporate public relations was not the path for me—nor was becoming an aide to Simon. Campaigns held out more excitement for me than government. I loved their energy, communal spirit, and win-or-go-home urgency. And now I saw the possibility of making a decent living doing them.

When a wealthy Simon donor offered to back me in a new political consulting firm, I was intrigued—until he told me the conditions: I couldn’t work against any candidate, Republican or Democrat, who was a strong supporter of Israel, he said—even if the rest of their record was abysmal. I said thanks, but no thanks. If I started my own firm to produce campaign strategy and media, I wasn’t going to hand anyone veto power over the candidates or causes we would represent.

So with Forrest Claypool as my junior partner, I borrowed a small room in the downtown law offices of one of Simon’s ardent supporters, and Axelrod and Associates was born.

O
F
ALL
THE
CAREERS
I
imagined for myself, “businessman” would have ranked about 101st on my
T
op 100 countdown.
Y
et here
I
was at the helm of a start-up.

Encouraged by the Simon victory, I saw the chance to do well and do good at the same time. I knew there was a better living to be made in campaign consulting than I had enjoyed as a reporter. I believed in my capacity to design and execute winning campaign messages and advertising—a bold claim, since I had exactly one race under my belt. Still, I relished the chance to prove it at the highest levels.

Yet in January 1985, despite my auspicious debut, the “highest levels” still seemed a long way up. Forrest and I began by begging our way into long-shot races for small, local offices that were appropriate for a firm with no real track record, led by guys with no formal training.

Our first winning race was for one of those long shots. Chuck Bernardini was a reform-minded candidate for the Cook County Board of Commissioners, a legislative backwater traditionally dominated by machine candidates. To try to break through, I wrote a series of comedic radio ads to burnish Bernardini’s name in the minds of voters. The playful ads starred a local improv actor named Dan Castellaneta, who would become famous a few years later as the voice of Homer Simpson.

We almost pulled off a much bigger upset in that first campaign cycle by nearly defeating future Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, who was making his first bid for Congress in an overwhelmingly Republican, exurban district.

Riding a populist wave over high utility rates, we entered the remaining weeks with our candidate, a nurse and county coroner named Mary Lou Kearns, in a position to win. Yet on the final weekend, thousands of mailings landed on the district’s doorsteps recounting salacious accusations against Kearns, who had been part of a messy divorce. Though the mailings were unsigned, and Hastert disavowed them, he advanced to Congress on the tide of this scurrilous, eleventh-hour smear effort.

Small-gauge though they were, these early races were fun and exciting, and gave us the chance to cut our teeth as political strategists and ad makers. I loved all of it: the creative challenge of scriptwriting; the long hours I spent directing actors in recording studios; choosing scenes in darkened film-editing suites. TV was a new medium for me, but a familiar challenge: tell stories in ways that are attention-grabbing and authentic. I had learned how to be a newspaperman by doing exactly that, and with the help of local producers, I would learn the ropes as a media consultant.

In making that leap, I found my background as a reporter enormously helpful. Obviously, that experience was useful in advising candidates on how to frame their stories and respond to the stories conceived by others. More than that, I had spent several years examining campaigns throughout this rich and diverse country, armed with questions aimed at understanding the unique dynamics of each race. I brought that same approach to my job as a consultant, probing to understand the critical and often shifting dynamics of the candidates, voters, and venues wherever I worked.

Every race is different, but the protocol is the same: Understand fully the array of arguments that could be made for and against your candidate, test them in polling, and cull the two or three that are most meaningful and that will have the greatest impact on the targeted voters you need to win. Then weave those arguments into a larger, authentic narrative that communicates who your candidate is and why he or she is running. In the end, campaigns are always a choice. Why should a voter choose Candidate A over Candidate B? The winning campaign is generally the one that dictates the terms of that choice by defining what the race is about.

A reporter’s ability to listen, probe, and gather information served me well. The art of storytelling was indispensable. And my high profile in Chicago political circles, both from reporting and from Simon’s victory, gave us a leg up on other fledgling firms in the competition for clients. While most of our early races were way down the ballot, we did find ourselves in the middle of one of the strangest governor’s races in Illinois history.

 • • • 

In 1982, former U.S. senator Adlai Stevenson III, heir to one of the great names in Illinois political history, decided to challenge Governor James R. Thompson in what was to be a heavyweight match. Thompson, the former corruption-busting prosecutor, was widely considered a rising star in national Republican politics. Yet with Reagan in the White House and the economy still struggling, 1982 would be a tough year for the GOP, and the supremely confident Thompson underestimated Stevenson, who proved far more tenacious than his staid image suggested. What resulted was the closest governor’s race in Illinois history. Thompson was declared the winner by just 5,074 votes out of more than 3.6 million ballots cast. Yet the Illinois Supreme Court refused Stevenson a recount. In a case of what goes around, comes around, the deciding vote was cast by a Democratic justice whom Senator Stevenson had refused to endorse for the federal bench.

As 1986 approached, Stevenson, now out of office, didn’t appear to have the stomach for a rematch. The consensus Democratic candidate was the state attorney general, Neil Hartigan, son of an alderman and protégé of the late mayor Daley. In 1972, the handsome redheaded Hartigan had been elected lieutenant governor at the tender age of thirty-four, which marked him as a man to watch in Illinois politics. Yet fidelity to the party organization meant waiting his turn. In 1986, Hartigan’s number came up.

Forrest and I were briefly contemplating a new partnership at the time, with David Doak, who had worked for Squier on the Simon race; Bob Shrum, a highly regarded speechwriter for Ted Kennedy and a legion of Democrats; and the pollster Pat Caddell. Part of the ante was to deliver a top Illinois race. I had misgivings about Hartigan. He was a thoroughly good and decent person, but he never struck me as particularly bold or incisive. Even so, he was going to be the nominee, and we signed on to the race. It wasn’t long before I began to regret it. The final straw was a strategy meeting at which one of his advisers asked him where he stood on abortion.

“Well, I’m against abortion,” replied Hartigan, a devout Catholic.

The aide persisted. “Yes, but is that in all cases? What about cases of rape and incest?”

“I don’t know,” Hartigan replied, turning to his brother, David, who was a lobbyist for the Chicago Archdiocese. “Dave, where is the pope on this?” We all burst out laughing, thinking Hartigan had meant this as a joke, but he wasn’t laughing. “I’m not kidding, you guys,” he shouted, his face reddening. “There may be some value in the answer.” That Hartigan wanted guidance on where the pope stood on abortion was shocking, but no more so than that three years into his tenure as attorney general, he seemed to have given no thought to this timely and sensitive legal issue.

Convinced that Hartigan was fatally flawed, I withdrew from the campaign that day. This would be a tug-and-pull I would wrestle with for years to come, between the demands of running a business and my ideas about what politics should be. Signing on with Hartigan wouldn’t be the last such compromise I would make, particularly early in my career, when I was struggling to establish our business. Still, it was unfair to him for me to have signed on halfheartedly and bad form to leave. Looking back, what was even more dubious was what I did next.

I began talking to Stevenson about the possibility of a rematch. This wasn’t a business decision. I could have made more money by sticking with Hartigan. Yet I genuinely believed that a rematch was the difference between winning and losing, and that Adlai, quirky but smart and honorable, would be a far better governor than either Hartigan or Thompson.

In the Senate, Adlai had teamed with Gary Hart, Bill Bradley, and other New Democrats to begin to redefine liberalism for the modern era, departing from orthodoxy on trade and other issues. While I didn’t agree with all of it, I had no doubt that Adlai would bring fresh thinking and integrity to the governor’s office.

As it became known that Stevenson was exploring another race for governor, a local newscaster invited him and Hartigan to appear for an hour of debate on his public affairs show. The night before the show, I went to Stevenson’s house to help him prepare. When I arrived, I found him sitting in a high-backed chair, a tumbler of whiskey in his hand. As soon as he spoke, it was clear that this had not been his first glass.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. We don’t need to do much,” he said, although the word sounded more like “mush,” and the former senator’s eyes appeared to be only half-open.

Holy crap, I thought. This guy has a debate in twelve hours, and he’s shitfaced!

But Stevenson indulged us and, whatever state of consciousness he was in, apparently absorbed our discussion. The next day, the old pro showed up and executed about 95 percent of the strategy. When an exasperated Hartigan finally played what he considered his trump card, suggesting that Stevenson was coasting on his famous name, Adlai was locked and loaded:

“You know, Neil, when I first decided to run for office many years ago, I went to Dick Daley and asked for his advice,” he began, a smile on his face. “And you know what he told me? He said, ‘Adlai, don’t ever change your name.’ And I never will.”

Hartigan dropped out shortly after the one-sided debate, and Adlai now had his rematch with Thompson. Before that contest was fully engaged, however, fate intervened. On the assumption that the entire party-endorsed state Democratic ticket would sail through the primary against nominal challengers, we hoarded our money for the general election and did little advertising. This was a dreadful mistake.

On primary night, two supporters of Lyndon LaRouche, the madcap neofascist, nabbed spots on the Democratic ticket in races that no one had bothered to poll because they were deemed uncompetitive. One of the winners, Mark Fairchild, defeated Adlai’s candidate for lieutenant governor. Now Adlai was tied on the ballot with a LaRouchie, duly nominated and unwilling to resign. The only answer was for
Adlai
to quit the ticket and run as a third-party candidate.

It was an incredible break for Thompson, who had run ten years earlier as an anti-machine reformer and was a man with talent and intellect as big as his six-foot-six frame. Yet Thompson had settled comfortably into a familiar and dreary pattern—temporizing problems while dispensing and accepting goodies as the state’s chief executive. Running as a Democrat, Stevenson could have taken Thompson. As the candidate of the newly constituted Solidarity Party, he had no chance.

But we did make Big Jim work, with a series of ads that got some attention. One featured a tap-dancing governor, shot from pin-striped knees down, highlighting Thompson’s many switches of position and broken promises. Yet in the end, Thompson had the last laugh, dispatching Stevenson with 53 percent of the vote.

In the fall of 1986, I got a call from Mayor Washington, who asked me to drop by his office at City Hall. When I walked in, Harold was sitting behind his ornate desk, eating.

“You want half my lunch?” he asked, thrusting an overstuffed sandwich in my direction.

I didn’t.

“Come on, look at me,” said the mayor, who had quit smoking after taking office and had put on what looked to be a good forty or fifty additional pounds. “You think I need a whole sandwich?”

Harold quickly got to the point. He was running for reelection in 1987 and wanted my help. “This is going to be a brawl,” he said. “These guys will do anything to beat me. They know if I win this one, it’s over. That’s the ball game.”

For three years, Council Wars raged on as the white ethnic bloc, led by Vrdolyak and Burke, had engaged the mayor in an epic battle, seeking to bedevil him at every turn. With a special election in 1986, a Washington-backed candidate, Luis Gutiérrez, had taken an aldermanic seat from a Vrdolyak ally in a new Hispanic ward, tipping the council’s balance of power in the mayor’s favor. All the more reason Harold’s foes were going to make one last run to take back the mayor’s office and regain control of the machinery of city government.

Blessed with an unparalleled gift for rewriting history in her own mind, Jane Byrne had returned to the fray, posturing herself once again as the plucky challenger and outsider. The combination of continuing racist resistance to Harold and widespread weariness with the ceaseless strife between the council and mayor actually made her comeback plausible. In early polls, Byrne was beating Washington among Democratic voters.

Even if he turned back Byrne’s challenge in the primary, Harold couldn’t assume victory. In the past, the general election was merely a formality, the ritual sacrifice of whatever poor, hapless soul was willing to run on the Republican line in an overwhelmingly Democratic city. Yet for many Chicago voters, race still trumped party. Bernard Epton, Harold’s last Republican opponent, had proven that. Now, with the city’s first black mayor on the ballot, candidates were lining up to take a shot.

Thomas Hynes, the popular county assessor and Daley ally, had signaled his intention to challenge the winner of the primary as an independent candidate. So had Vrdolyak, Washington’s council nemesis. And the Republicans would slate a credible candidate as well. If voters coalesced around one of them, the mayor knew it could be a close and competitive race.

“This is serious business,” Harold told me, in grave tones. “I don’t want to play around.”

While I would be the point man on the Washington reelection campaign, I needed help in what promised to be a full-tilt rumble. So I recruited my friends Shrum and Doak, who had dropped Caddell and started their own media firm, to partner in what I saw as an important moment in the city’s history. Fortunately, Washington had plenty to tout, having made good on his pledge to end the most egregious patronage abuses at City Hall and to refocus its efforts on improving the city’s neighborhoods. Though Harold was plainly happier on the hustings than behind a desk, and though some of his appointees were more notable for their loyalty than their talent, he had made a solid impact.