David Axelrod

I met David Axelrod in 1986, long before he became Chief Strategist for President Obama.

He had been a political reporter for the Chicago Tribune and had quit to launch a career as a political consultant. He won on his first try, helping Democratic Congressman Paul Simon snatch a U.S. Senate seat from three-term incumbent Charles Percy.

In the next round of campaigns, he did what any new business owner would do - grab every piece of business he could and then decide, at the right time, which ones to keep and which ones to dump.

He would have to pick one candidate to be his primary client and several others to advise on the side. Since he was doing this to earn a living and build a company, he had to win. He couldn’t just pick people because he liked them.

One of those jettisoned was Lee Botts, who was running in the Democratic primary for Metropolitan Sanitary District Commissioner. She was the last of eight candidates to file nominating petitions for the race and that gave the impression her campaign was not well organized and that she was not likely to win.

When Axelrod said he couldn’t help her anymore, she asked to meet with him and she brought along her political brain trust. It consisted of UIC Professor Dan Swartzman (her campaign chair), 48th Ward Committeeman Bob Remer, Evanston Committeeman Greg Kinczewski, and me.

I was instantly impressed with Axelrod. He used campaign lingo effortlessly despite having been in the business only a short time. It was as if he had been acquainted with the vocabulary for years.

And he was a really nice guy. He was dumping us but I still wanted to thank him for treating us so well.

Actually, he didn’t do much for the Botts campaign and we didn’t really feel we were losing anything. We thought he was just a reporter who got lucky working in politics. We didn’t recognize his talent.

That’s a weird thing to think now.