If ”spin” is the political equivalent of making lemonade out of lemons, then political consultant David Axelrod was whirling like a dervish last week and the juice was flying.
His client in the U.S. Senate race, Al Hofeld, was about to go down in flames, finishing third in a field of three behind Carol Moseley Braun and Alan Dixon. And to make matters infinitely worse, Hofeld had spent more than $4 million of his own money in the process. Axelrod had his work cut out for him.
He left his suite at the Palmer House, the one he takes for every major election and stocks with corned beef sandwiches and potato salad from Manny`s, just off Roosevelt Road, and took the elevator down to Hofeld headquarters. A morgue. He was quickly surrounded by the TV, radio and newspaper reporters he had cultivated throughout the campaign. The more important ones got daily phone calls, often from his car phone. As they crowded around him, he carefully explained that Hofeld hadn`t exactly lost, it was just that something called ”change” had won.
”Two-thirds of the voters cast their vote for change,” he said to the first reporter. ”The people of Illinois want change,” he said to the second. Each reporter got a slightly different sound bite.
”There`s a large constituency for change.”
”An awful lot of voters today voted for change.”
”Change is the big winner tonight.”
And then, on a happier mission, Axelrod went down to the lobby, where the Clinton celebration was in progress.
Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas is also a client. In fact, Axelrod had four candidates in last week`s Illinois primary: Hofeld, Clinton, Rep. Dan Rostenkowski and Patrick Murphy, running for Cook County state`s attorney. All Democrats. Axelrod won`t work for Republicans.
All in all, the day was a draw. Two winners: Clinton and Rostenkowski. Two losers: Hofeld and Murphy.
Axelrod shrugged it off.
”You`re never as smart as they think you are when you win, or as dumb as they think when you lose.”
Down in Clintonland, the spinning was a whole lot easier.
”Big, huge, devastating,” said Axelrod, discussing the margin of victory with one reporter.
”Tsongas is just a rumor in Michigan,” he told another.
He worked the room, shmoozing with friends, reporters, cronies (”What do you hear?” ”What do you hear?”), a cellular phone in one hand, a beeper in the other and mustard on his sleeve.
At 37, David Axelrod is the premier political media consultant in the Midwest, and the messiest. When he worked as a political reporter at the Tribune, he once borrowed a tie from a colleague so he could appear on a TV talk show. Two weeks later, he returned a food-splattered rag. Political insiders estimate his fee from Hofeld at about $400,000, which he says is high, but maybe not that high. Whatever, Axelrod certainly isn`t blowing his money on clothes.
A few days after the election, Axelrod is sitting at Manny`s, eating-food is flying-delivering a post-mortem. He has been over this stuff a zillion times in the past couple of days with about a million people-Is Clinton electable? What`s Jerry Brown`s problem? Did Hofeld ever stand a chance?-but he`s not bored. He lives for this stuff.
”He`s a political junkie,” says Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.).
Axelrod eats, sleeps and probably dreams politics. Always has. It was dinner-table conversation for him and his sister and his parents, both
”committed New Dealers,” when he was growing up in New York. He actually looked forward to visits from the precinct captain.
”We`d stand around for hours and talk politics. I thought it was the most exciting thing.”
While other kids were reading ”See Spot run” he was scanning the morning papers. When he was 9, he worked in Robert Kennedy`s Senate race; when he was 10, he knocked on doors for John Lindsay. ”But I worked out of Liberal Party headquarters, I didn`t want to work for a Republican,” he says of the latter.
A `hungry` reporter
Axelrod broke into journalism while he was still majoring in political science at the University of Chicago. He began writing a political column for the Hyde Park Herald and free-lancing for Time magazine.
”He was bright, a guy with a very good political sense. I wrote him a recommendation when he was seeking an internship at the Tribune,” says political consultant Don Rose, who has worked for Gov. Jim Edgar, former Mayor Jane Byrne and the late Mayor Harold Washington.
In 1976 the Tribune hired Axelrod out of college, but covering fires bored him. He badgered his editors to put him on the political beat. Finally, to shut him up, in 1979 they assigned him to the going-nowhere campaign of Jane Byrne. Axelrod rode that pony right to the finish line. Byrne became mayor, and Axelrod never covered another fire.
”Politics fascinated him,” says Richard Ciccone, Tribune managing editor. ”He was very precocious about the process and the system.”
”Hungry” is a word used to describe Axelrod in his Tribune days. He had his own column, with his picture at the top. Quite a coup, considering that he was just in his 20s. It was a lot of exposure, a lot of clout for a kid, but it wasn`t enough for him.
”I was beginning to write the same stories over and over again,” he says. ”It`s hard to grow old gracefully in journalism.”
He wanted more: more money, more power, more action.
”I always wanted to be one of the few people inside the room shaping the news, rather than one of the hundred people standing outside, waiting to hear what it was.”
Signing on with Simon
Axelrod had interviewed Paul Simon a few times and the two had hit it off. Axelrod thought Simon had values, but was still effective. Simon thought Axelrod had a real feel for politics. He asked him to work in his 1984 Senate race against incumbent Charles Percy, and Axelrod said yes. He signed on as press secretary, but the campaign was a mess, and before long, he was running it. He worked 12 to 15 hours a day, seven days a week, positioning Simon as
”a senator you can count on.”
”That sounds almost trite,” says Axelrod, ”but that was the distillation of all the themes. People were distrustful of Percy because he had been all over the lot on a lot of issues. He was more interested in foreign affairs than Illinois affairs. We developed all that, but it all came down to `Who can you count on?` We drove the debate that way.”
Simon beat Percy. Don`t forget, this was 1984. Ronald Reagan won 49 states in being re-elected president, and Simon was one of only two Democratic challengers elected. Tom Harkin of Iowa was the other.
”David was very effective,” says Simon. ”He`s very good at political intrigue, and I don`t mean that in a negative sense.”
Simon wanted him to take a job in his office, but Axelrod wasn`t interested. He had learned during the campaign that he was good at helping a candidate define a message, then selling that message to the voters. A valuable skill. Axelrod and Associates was born.
”We try to get involved with virtually everything that has to do with the dissemination of the message,” says Axelrod. That includes writing and placing TV and radio ads, planting stories with the media, writing speeches, preparing candidates for debates and responding to disasters.
Axelrod, who is on retainer to Richard Daley, was called in to help the mayor deal with the media after his son Patrick`s unauthorized party ended in a brawl. He`s also on retainer to the Clinton campaign, where he says his role is that of ”kibitzer.”
”I have a little input, but I don`t have to sign my life away,” says Axelrod, who lives with his wife, Susan, and three children in Oak Park.
Democratic Who`s Who
Today, Axlerod and Associates has seven employees and a suite of offices in River North. In 1991, which wasn`t even a major election year, the firm placed $7 million in advertising. Typically, it charges 15 percent of the media buy, plus a consultation fee; 1992 could be much more profitable.
”David is successful because he has a shrewd analytical sense,” says Rose. ”He`s got a good gut, and he`s learned to use the technological tools- polling, the media and so on-to turn a strategic sense into a significant campaign.”
Axelrod`s client list reads like a Who`s Who of Illinois Democrats:
Simon, Rostenkowski, Adlai Stevenson, Harold Washington, Richard Daley, Richard Phelan. He has also worked for politicians in Indiana, Utah, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Kentucky and Texas. Last year, the firm handled 12 mayoral races.
Unlike many political consultants, Axelrod writes his own TV spots. They`re often biting, often negative. A commercial that helped elect U.S. Rep. Jill Long of Indiana portrayed her opponent as a card shark pulling a fast one on the public. The Hofeld campaign, which painted Dixon as a pawn of special- interest groups, was one of the more bitter ones in recent Illinois history.
Axelrod doesn`t apologize.
”Look, voters don`t go into the voting booth saying, `I love all these folks-who do I love the most?` You have to draw distinctions between them. Negative advertising can be very effective.”
As one of the most visible and successful consultants in the area, Axelrod gets a lot of criticism. He`s accused of jumping from candidate to candidate, and, while claiming to represent the reform wing of the Democratic Party, working for business-as-usual candidates such as Richard Elrod, George Dunne and Neil Hartigan.
”He`s very judgmental of other people,” says one political insider,
”but he doesn`t hold himself up to the same high standards. Just look at some of the races he`s been involved in.”
Axelrod says that`s because he has different standards for primaries than for general elections.
”In a primary, you fight to define your party. But I`m a partisan; in a general election I support the Democratic candidate. And just because I work for a candidate doesn`t mean I belong to them for life. If someone disappoints me, I move on.”
”The nature of the business is you have to constantly grow just to sustain yourself,” says Marilyn Katz, who has her own communications firm,
”and that means you have to take clients that are not always the personification of your own point of view. Inadvertently, you become a hired gun.”
Stinging charge
That charge-that he`s for sale to the highest bidder-makes Axelrod bristle.
”I`ve walked away from candidates that I wasn`t comfortable with,” he says. ”I`ve turned down plenty of races. I said no to Marty Russo because Bill Lipinski has always supported all of my candidates. I`ve worked for people with lots of money, and I`ve worked for people with no money. When Pat Quinn ran for treasurer, I lent him money. If he runs for governor in `94, I`ll work for him, and he`ll be the least-well-funded candidate in the race. Pat Murphy was another of my impoverished races. The truth is, in the Senate race, it was my considered opinion that you couldn`t beat Alan Dixon without a lot of money, and I was right. Carol Moseley Braun ran a multimillion-dollar race. It just wasn`t her money, it was ours.”
Or rather Hofeld`s. That race was a setback for Axelrod. ”Change” may have won, but Hofeld definitely lost.
”David had a bad day,” says Rose. ”We`re judged in a couple of ways. Obviously winning and losing is one of them.”
Axelrod takes it in stride.
”What makes the lows less low is knowing you can go home and play with your kids and they don`t give a damn if you`ve won an election or lost,” he says. ”That`s my hedge against going nuts in this business.”
