David Axelrod

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David Axelrod : biography

February 22, 1955 –

Axelrod was formerly a political writer for the Chicago Tribune. He is the founder of AKPD Message and Media, and operated ASK Public Strategies, now called ASGK Public Strategies. He is also the inaugural director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.University of Chicago (2012). . Retrieved 7 November 2012.

Early life

Axelrod grew up in Stuyvesant Town on the East Side of Manhattan, NY. He is the son of Myril Bennett, a journalist at PM, a left-wing 1940s newspaper, and Joseph Axelrod, a psychologist and avid baseball fan.http://www.boston.com/yourtown/newton/articles/2009/02/15/for_her_its_also_hail_to_my_son/http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2008/12/02/10-things-you-didnt-know-about-david-axelrod His family was Jewish. He attended Public School 40 in Manhattan. Axelrod’s parents separated when he was eight years old. Axelrod traces his political involvement back to his childhood. 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. He majored in political science. 

As an undergraduate, Axelrod wrote for the Hyde Park Herald, covering politics, and picked up an internship at the Chicago Tribune. He lost his father to suicide about the time of his graduation from college in 1977.

While at the University of Chicago, he met his future wife, business student Susan Landau. They were married in 1979. In June 1981, Susan gave birth to their first child, Lauren, who was diagnosed with epilepsy at seven months of age.

Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008

Axelrod’s ties with Obama reach back more than a decade. Axelrod met Obama in 1992 when Obama so impressed Betty Lou Saltzmann, a woman from Chicago’s "lakefront liberal crowd," during a black voter registration drive he ran that she then introduced the two. Obama also consulted Axelrod before he delivered a 2002 anti-war speech and asked him to read drafts of his book, The Audacity of Hope.

Axelrod served as the chief strategist and media advisor for Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Axelrod contemplated taking a break from the 2008 presidential campaign, as five of the candidates—Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, and Tom Vilsack—were past clients. Personal ties between Axelrod and Hillary Clinton also made it difficult, as she had done significant work on behalf of epilepsy causes for a foundation co-founded by Axelrod’s wife and mother, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE) (Axelrod’s daughter suffers from developmental disabilities associated with chronic epileptic seizures.) Axelrod’s wife even said that a 1999 conference Clinton convened to find a cure for the condition was "one of the most important things anyone has done for epilepsy."

Axelrod ultimately decided to participate in the Obama campaign. He told The Washington Post, "I thought that if I could help Barack Obama get to Washington, then I would have accomplished something great in my life."

Axelrod contributed to the initial announcement of Obama’s campaign by creating a five-minute Internet video released January 16, 2007.

He continued to use 'man on the street' style biographical videos to create intimacy and authenticity in the political ads. 

While the Clinton campaign chose a strategy that emphasized experience, Axelrod helped to craft the Obama campaign’s main theme of "change." Axelrod criticized the Clinton campaign’s positioning by saying that "being the consummate Washington insider is not where you want to be in a year when people want change…[Clinton’s] initial strategic positioning was wrong and kind of played into our hands."