David Axelrod

At 69 years old, David Axelrod has this physical status:

For other persons with this name, see David Axelrod (disambiguation) David M. Axelrod (born February 22, 1955) is an American political consultant and analyst, best known for being the Chief Strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns. After Obama's election, Axelrod was appointed as Senior Advisor to the President.

He left the position in early 2011 and became the Senior Strategist for Obama's successful re-election campaign in 2012.Axelrod wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and joined CNN as Senior Political Commentator in 2015.

As of December 2019, Axelrod serves as the director of the non-partisan University of Chicago Institute of Politics.

His memoir is titled Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.

Early life

Axelrod was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, and grew up in its Stuyvesant Town area. He was raised in a liberal Jewish family and had his bar mitzvah ceremony at the Brotherhood Synagogue in Manhattan. His mother, Myril Bennett (née Davidson), was a journalist at PM, a liberal-leaning 1940s newspaper, and later an advertising executive at Young & Rubicam. His father, Joseph Axelrod, was a psychologist and avid baseball fan, who migrated from Eastern Europe to the United States at the age of eleven. He attended Public School 40 in Manhattan. Axelrod's parents separated when he was eight years old. In 2021, Axelrod disclosed in a CNN op-ed that his father suffered from severe clinical depression, unbeknownst at the time to the family, which led to his suicide when the younger Axelrod was 20.

Describing the appeal of politics, he told the Los Angeles Times, "I got into politics because I believe in idealism. Just to be a part of this effort that seems to be rekindling the kind of idealism that I knew when I was a kid, it's a great thing to do. So I find myself getting very emotional about it." At thirteen years old, he was selling campaign buttons for Robert F. Kennedy. After graduating from New York's Stuyvesant High School in 1972, Axelrod attended the University of Chicago, where he majored in political science. Axelrod described his childhood as "very turbulent", although he did not specify the exact details that elicited this characterization.

As an undergraduate, Axelrod wrote for the Hyde Park Herald, covering politics, and earned an internship at the Chicago Tribune.

Personal life

Axelrod lost his father to suicide in 1977, around the time of his college graduation.

While at the University of Chicago he met his future wife, business student Susan Landau (daughter of research doctor Richard L. Landau), and they married in 1979.

In June 1981, they had their first child, a daughter. She was diagnosed with epilepsy at seven months of age. Axelrod describes Lauren as having had brutal seizures, requiring a constantly changing regimen of medications for some time. This left her developmentally disabled, but nevertheless mainstreamed in school. For a few years after high school, the family struggled to find programs that would keep her happy and fulfilled, but were able to place her in Misericordia, a large dormitory-style group home in 2002, where she leads an active life. As of 2021, Axelrod advocates for a flexible, mixed approach to group homes and support environments for people like his daughter, in contrast to the common approach of exclusively moving toward smaller group homes.

The Axelrods have two other children.

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Career

After Axelrod's graduation from college, the Chicago Tribune hired him. He spent eight years with the national, state, and local politics, becoming the country's youngest political writer in 1981. He took over the City Hall Bureau Chief and a political columnist for the paper at the age of 27. He left the Tribune and joined the United States' campaign. Senator Paul Simon served as the communications chief in 1984. He was promoted to co-campaign manager within weeks.

Axelrod & Associates, a 1985 political consultancy company, founded Axelrod & Associates. In 1987, he served on Harold Washington's first black mayor's reelection bid, while spearheading Simon's campaign for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination. This was his first exposure to black politics, and he went on to run for mayors in Cleveland, Michael R. White in Cleveland, Anthony A. Williams in Washington, D.C., Lee P. Brown in Houston, and John F. Street in Philadelphia. Axelrod, a long-serving Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, referred to him as a "urban affairs specialist." The Economist also excels at "packaging black candidates for white voters."

Axelrod was hired in January 1990 to act as the communications consultant for Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt's re-election bid. Goldschmidt, on the other hand, announced in February that he did not seek re-election. The Liberal Party of Ontario retained Axelrod to support Dalton McGuinty and his colleagues in 2002 and regained power in the October 2003 election. Axelrod's impact on Ontario was heard through his winning Liberal appeal to "working families" and placing more emphasis on positive policy comparisons such as ending corporate tax breaks to funding education and health.

Axelrod served for John Edwards' presidential bid in 2004. He ceased to make ads, but stayed as the campaign's spokesperson. "I have a whole lot of admiration for John, but I can't tell you why—that never happened with John."

Axelrod served as a consultant for Exelon, an Illinois-area company that owned the country's largest fleet of nuclear reactors.

Axelrod's contribution to the Chicago Tribune in support of patronage was announced after two top officials in the Chicago Tribune's administration of longtime client Richard M. Daley were arrested for "pervasive misconduct" in City Hall recruiting and promotions, according to federal prosecutors. He worked on several campaigns, including the highly acclaimed campaigns of Eliot Spitzer in New York's gubernatorial election and Deval Patrick in Massachusetts' gubernatorial election. In 2006, Axelrod was the chief political strategist for Democratic congressional Committee Chair Rahm Emanuel, who was elected President of the United States House of Representatives, in which Democrats gained 31 seats.

He was an Adjunct Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, where he, together with Professor Peter Miller, taught an undergraduate class titled Campaign Strategy, analysing political campaigns, and their tactics. He received an honorary Doctor of Human Letters degree from DePaul University on June 14, 2009, during the College of Communication and College of Computing and Digital Media's commencement exercises.

Bettylu Saltzman, a Chicago Democrat, introduced the two of them in 1992 after Obama had impressed her at a black voter registration drive that he ran. Before he made a 2002 anti-war speech, Obama talked to Axelrod, who begged him to read drafts of his book The Audacity of Hope.

Axelrod considered quitting politics during the 2008 presidential race as five of the candidates—Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and Tom Vilsack — were all former clients. Axelrod and Hillary Clinton's personal connections made it difficult, as she had collected significant funds for epilepsy on behalf of a charity co-founded by Axelrod's wife and mother, Citizens United for Epilepsy. (CURE) (Axelrod's daughter suffers from developmental disorders associated with chronic epileptic seizures.) Axelrod's wife also said that a 1999 conference to find a cure for epilepsy was "one of the most important things anyone has ever done for epilepsy." Axelrod later joined the Obama campaign and served as a chief strategist and media advisor for Obama. "I thought that if I could help Barack Obama get to Washington, then I would have accomplished something amazing in my life," he told The Washington Post.

Axelrod was instrumental in the initial reveal of Obama's campaign by releasing a five-minute Internet video on January 16, 2007. To give a sense of intimacy and authenticity in the political ads, he continued to use "man on the street"-style biographical films.

Though the Clinton campaign adopted a strategy that stressed experience, Axelrod was instrumental in the development of Obama's campaign's key theme, "change." He was critical of the Clinton campaign's positioning, saying that "being the consummate Washington insider is not where you want to be in a year when people want to change... [Clinton's] initial strategic positioning was inaccurate and played into our hands." Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses was owing to the change's message. "Just over half of [Iowa's] Democratic caucus-goers said the No." According to CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider, one factor they were looking for in a candidate was their age, and 51% of those voters favored Barack Obama over the years. "That compares to only 19 percent of 'change' caucus voters who preferred Clinton." Axelrod continued to believe that the Clinton campaign mistook the caucuses states' importance. "They [bewilderingly] didn't have no idea about the caucuses and how crucial they were going to be." In the 2008 primary season, Obama gained a majority of the states that use the caucus system.

Axelrod is credited with implementing a program that encourages people's participation, a lesson learned in part from Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign, as well as a personal goal of Barack Obama. "When we began this campaign, Barack told us that he wanted the campaign to be a tool for involving people and giving them a stake in the kind of community he believed in." Volunteering with Axelrod became the campaign's legacy, according to Axelrod. Volunteers, according to Axelrod, became the campaign's legacy. To support a grassroots campaign, a grassroots strategy requires relying on "Web 2.0" technologies and viral media. Supporters are encouraged to blog, build their own personal page, and even call the phonebank from home using Obama's web site. In 2007, Axelrod's elaborate use of the Internet enabled Obama to register under-down voters and raise over 475,000 donors, the majority of whom were Internet contributors with less than $100 per month. In comparison to Hillary Clinton's campaign, the Obama campaign received a lot of attention, major donors, and a lot of support among veteran Democratic politicians.

Axelrod was described by Politico as'soft-spoken' and'mild-mannered,' and the Chicago newspaper quoted one Obama aide as saying, "Do you know how lucky we are that he is our Mark Penn?" "He's a soothing presence," a Democratic consultant and former colleague Dan Fee said of Axelrod. Bill Daley, a Chicago Tribune political advisor, said of Axelrod, "He's not a screamer, like some of these guys." "He has a good sense of humor, so he's able to defuse things." The New York Times described Axelrod as a "campaign guru" with "appreciation for Chicago-style politics" in June 2008.

Obama named Axelrod as a senior advisor to his cabinet on November 20, 2008. His responsibilities included developing strategy and delivering President Obama's word in collaboration with President Obama, the Obama Administration, journalists, and the White House's communications staff.

In his remarks to the media in 2010, Axelrod, notably robo-signing, was widely chastised for downplaying the severity of the crisis, telling the viewers of CBS News' Face the Country that the Obama administration's "hope is this is quickly and that this will unwound very quickly" and that "valid foreclosures that might have probably should continue" and that "there are in fact valid foreclosures that may not go forward." Axelrod made this comment after several banks had voluntary suspended foreclosures and evictions in order to look at improprieties.

On January 28, 2011, Axelrod resigned as a White House senior advisor. He was a top aide to Obama's re-election bid in 2012. Axelrod also stated that his final work as a campaign strategist in the 2012 race would be as a political strategist.

Axelrod founded a bipartisan Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, where he serves as director. Axelrod, according to La Stampa, was assisting Italian prime minister Mario Monti with his election bid and had flown to Italy to speak with Monti ten days before. Monti's government maintained that they came in fourth with 10.5% of the vote in the Italian general election, 2013. Axelrod joined NBC News and MSNBC as a senior political analyst on February 19, 2013, a position he held until September 2015, when he switched to CNN.

In 2014, Axelrod was appointed senior strategic advisor to the British Labour Party to support party leader Ed Miliband in the run-up to the 2015 general election.

He, along with Eric Sedler, co-founder of AKPD Message and Media and ASK Public Strategies, which have since been sold in 2009. Believer: My Forty Years in Politics was published in Feb. 2015.

Axelrod launched The Axe Files, a series of in-depth discussions and interviews with various political figures in 2015. With co-host Mike Murphy, he launched Hacks on Tap in June 2019, a show on which the two hosts debate recent developments and forecasts from the 2020 presidential campaign trail. In September, 2015, he joined CNN as a senior political commentator.

Axelrod has spoken out in favor of impeachment in 2018, warning that if "we "normalize" impeachment as a political tactic, it will be another hammer blow to our democracy."

He declared his intention to retire as director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and chair the university's advisory board in 2022, effective January 2023. "David's leadership of the IOP has fuelled the IOP's growth and success over the past decade," UChicago President Paul Alivisatos said of his service.

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