Axelrod, David

David Axelrod was born on February 22, 1955 in New York into a middle-class Jewish family. His father, Joseph Axelrod (Joseph Axelrod) was a psychologist, his mother, Miril Axelrod (Myril Axelrod) in the 1940s was a journalist in PM - the left political newspaper, and then began working in the advertising business ^{[3] [4]} . His parents first broke up when David was five years old, and finally divorced in 1968. Axelrod and his sister Joan (Joan) stayed with their mother ^{[5] [4]} . Axelrod's father, whom he later called his “best friend and hero,” committed suicide when his son was nineteen ^[6] , ^[7] .

Axelrod showed early interest in politics. For example, at thirteen, he sold campaign badges as part of New York Senator Robert Kennedy’s campaign, who expected to become the only Democratic Party candidate in the US presidential election, but was shot dead in June 1968. ^{[8] [9] [10] [11]} .

After graduating from high school, Axelrod entered the University of Chicago (University of Chicago) and in the same summer, until he moved to Chicago , got a job as a reporter in the Villahat newspaper in Manhattan ^[4] . While studying at university, he specialized in political science ^{[5] [12]} . As a graduate student, Axelrod was working as a political observer in the Hyde Park Herald newspaper. After graduating from university in 1976, he received a summer internship at the Chicago Tribune , after which the Chicago newspaper offered him a permanent job ^{[13] [14]} .

As a Chicago Tribune reporter, Axelrod commented on political campaigns from outsiders from time to time. In 1979, he began to cover the campaign of Jane M. Byrne, a little-known candidate for mayor of Chicago. His articles have become an important factor in the victory of Byrne, who won the election, becoming the first woman - mayor of Chicago. This, in turn, had a positive effect on the career of Axelrod himself, who took the place of the political observer of the Chicago Tribune ^[15] .

At the age of twenty-seven, Axelrod became the Chicago Tribune bureau chief in the Chicago city administration, combining this position with the duties of a political commentator. However, in desperation to make a decent career in the Chicago Tribune, in 1984 he joined the Illinois senatorial election campaign of Paul Simon, a member of the House of Representatives from Illinois, as head of public relations ^{[12] [10]} . After only a few weeks, Axelrod was appointed to the post of one of the leaders of the campaign headquarters of Democrat Simon, who was ahead of Republican Charles Percy , who had been elected senator three times in the election race ^{[6] [16]} .

In 1985, Axelrod opened his own political advisory company Axelrod & Associates ^[6] , now known as AKP & D Message and Media ^[17] . In 1987, he successfully participated in the election campaign of the first black mayor of Chicago, Harold Washington (Harold Washington), re-elected for a second term. In addition, Axelrod has long remained a strategist in the team of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley , who was elected to this post in 1989 and successfully re-elected in 1991, 1995, 1999, 2003 and 2007 ^{[12] [6] [18]} .

In 2004, as a spokesman for the press service, Axelrod participated in the election campaign of Democrat John Edwards , who ran for the US presidency. According to the results of the primary elections, Edwards did not get enough votes, the only round of primaries he won was in South Carolina ^{[19] [20]} .

In 2006, Axelrod advised the election headquarters of Eliot Spitzer , who won the elections for New York Governor and Deval Patrick , who was elected Governor of Massachusetts ^{[21] [10] [3]} .

Axelrod seriously thought about refusing to participate in the election campaigns of US presidential candidates, as five of them were his former clients. They were Barack Obama , Hillary Clinton , John Edwards , Christopher Dodd and Tom Vilsack ^{[10] [3]} . However, after some thought, Axelrod decided to participate in Obama’s election campaign, becoming the chief strategist of the campaign headquarters ^{[8] [5] [12] [4]} .

Axelrod’s main theme of the campaign was the idea of ​​change. As the results showed, he was not mistaken. The campaign headquarters of Hillary Clinton, Obama's main rival in the primary, made a bet on the experience and credibility of his leader and lost. On June 7, 2008, Clinton announced the end of the election campaign and urged voters to support Obama, who became the only candidate from the Democratic Party ^[22] .

The election campaign of Obama under the leadership of Axelrod had a number of distinctive features. Obama, for example, refused to use funds from the state budget to finance his election campaign ^[23] , and also to take money from lobbyists ^[24] . Despite all this, in the summer of 2008, the Obama election fund was more than twice as large as the Republican candidate candidate John McCain ^[25] . Total Obama managed to collect donations worth more than 750 million dollars ^{[26] [27]} . For pre-election campaign Axelrod’s team actively used the Internet and SMS messages ^[28] . In addition, Obama received the support of prominent US cultural figures, among whom were Bob Dylan , Bruce Springsteen and Chuck Berry ^{[29] [30] [31]} .

On the day of the November 4, 2008 presidential election, Obama received 51 percent of the vote and more than 300 electoral votes, which ensured him a convincing victory over Republican McCain. Voter turnout was the highest in the United States since 1908, at about 64 percent ^[32] .

Shortly after Obama was elected President Axelrod was named the future senior advisor to the president ^[33] . Commenting on this appointment, Axelrod suggested that he would perform functions similar to those that he performed during the Obama election campaign ^[34] . Axelrod took office as a senior adviser to the White House immediately after Obama’s inauguration on January 20, 2009. ^[35] In February 2011, Axelrod left the post of adviser to prepare for the new Obama presidential campaign in the 2012 elections ^{[36] [37]} .

Axelrod met his future spouse Susan Landau (Susan Landau) at the University of Chicago. They were married in 1979 ^{[13] [14]} . The couple have three children ^[3] , and it is known that their daughter Lauren (Lauren) suffers from epilepsy ^[4] . Axelrod's wife became president, and he himself was an honorary member of the advisory board of the public charity Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE), which contributed to research on the treatment of epilepsy ^{[14] [9]} .

• When writing this article, we used material ( text on Wikisource ) from “ Lentapedia ”, available under Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 Unported license .

• "A true believer meets reality", The Economist, Feb 14th 2015