Obama's Closest Advisor: David Axelrod - Smear Merchant

• Longtime Democratic political consultant 
• President Obama’s closest advisor

David M. Axelrod was born February 22, 1955, to Myril Bennett Axelrod (who worked for PM, a leftist New York newspaper whose ranks were penetrated by communists seeking to advance the Stalinist line) and Joseph Axelrod (a psychologist who committed suicide in 1974).


David would later describe his parents as “your classic New York leftist Democrats.” He grew up in Manhattan and, from an early age, engaged passionately in politics. At age ten, he canvassed for New York mayoral candidate John Lindsay (a Democrat); when he was thirteen, he sold campaign buttons and bumper stickers promoting Robert Kennedy for President.

Axelrod graduated from New York's Stuyvesant High School in June 1972 and enrolled, that fall, at the University of Chicago, where he majored in political science and wrote for the student newspaper. In late 1973 or early 1974, he secured a job as a political columnist for the Hyde Park Herald, a local weekly newspaper. His work at the Herald caught the attention of two particularly noteworthy individuals, David Canter and Don Rose:

• David Canter (1923-2004) was the son of Harry Jacob Canter, a lifelong communist who: served as secretary of the Boston Communist Party; ran for governor of Massachusetts on the Communist Party ticket in 1930; earned a special invitation to Stalin's USSR in 1932; and later taught at the Abraham Lincoln School, an infamous Chicago-based front that indoctrinated students in the teachings of Marx and Lenin. Like his father, David Canter was also a lifelong communist. He was educated in Stalin's Soviet Union from 1932-37, before returning with his family to the United States. He later became an attorney and developed ties to the National Lawyers Guild. In the Guide to Subversive Organizations and Publications, an exhaustive Congressional analysis compiled between 1955 and 1968, Canter's name appeared 25 times. On July 12, 1962, Canter was subpoenaed to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), where he was questioned about the agendas of Translation World Publishers, the pro-Soviet, Soviet-subsidized publishing house he had co-created with LeRoy Wolins, a well-known communist. Canter refused to answer any HUAC questions about his past or present membership in the Communist Party USA (CPUSA).
  
• Canter's associate, Don Rose (who is still alive), was never proven to be a CPUSA member. He was, however, a member of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, an organization replete with communists and Sixties radicals. He also belonged to the Alliance to End Repression (a suspected Communist Party front), and he did some press work for the Students for a Democratic Society. In the 1960s, Rose and Canter collaborated to establish a far-left, pro-communist community newspaper called Hyde Park-Kenwood Voices, which echoed CPUSA propaganda.

Soon after meeting Axelrod, Canter and Rose became mentors to the young man and helped shape his political development.

In 1977, Axelrod completed his B.A. in political science at the University of Chicago. That same year, Canter and Rose used their influence to help Axelrod secure an internship at the Chicago Tribune. “I ... wrote a reference letter for him,” Rose recalls, “that helped him win an internship at the Tribune, which was the next step in his journalism career.” In 1982 Axelrod was promoted, becoming the Tribune’s youngest chief political writer.

In 1984, however, Axelrod, dissatisfied with his career and with the “corporatization of journalism” in general, left the Tribune and sought to establish himself as an advisor/consultant for Democrat political campaigns. His first big opportunity came when he worked for the Senate campaign of Illinois Representative Paul Simon. Originally hired as Simon's communications director, Axelrod was promoted to co-manager of the entire campaign within two months. In this role, he worked closely with a 25-year-old Rahm Emanuel, who would go on to become President Barack Obama’s chief of staff a quarter-century later.

Following Simon’s successful Senate bid, Axelrod in 1985 founded a political consultancy called Axelrod & Associates, later known as AKP&D Message and Media, which specialized in “representing Democratic candidates and progressive causes.” (The "A" in the firm's acronym was for Axelrod. The "K" was for John Kupper, a former Capitol Hill press secretary. The "P" was for David Plouffe, who would serve as campaign manager to Senator Barack Obama. And the "D" was for John Del Cecato, a longtime press secretary.)

Axelrod quickly cultivated a reputation for his aggressive use of negative messaging to discredit his clients' political rivals. A Chicago Magazine profile from December 1987 dubbed Axelrod a “Hatchet Man” who was ever-prepared to “blast the dickens” out of an opponent. Reflecting Axelrod's constancy in this regard, a Tribune profile two decades later described him as a “ferocious” competitor who was unafraid to use “venom” to poison the campaigns of rivals, or “brass knuckles” to “bludgeon” his foes.

Further, Axelrod was heralded as a “five-tool consultant,” adept at writing speeches, press releases, and statements; crafting a campaign message; plotting strategy; producing radio and television spots; and acting as a spokesman for candidates.

In 1987, Axelrod’s company was hired to run the re-election campaign of Harold Washington, the incumbent African-American mayor of Chicago who had close ties to the Democratic Socialists of America. Here, Axelrod worked with Don Rose and David Canter. It is also possible that he met Barack Obama, who was then emerging as a community organizer in Chicago, during this period. Certainly by 1992, Axelrod and Obama knew one another. They became acquainted when Obama led a Project Vote voter-registration drive in Chicago that year. Liberal lore maintains that the two men were introduced in 1992 by Bettylu Saltzman, one of Chicago's leading left-wing Democrats.

Having successfully directed Mayor Washington’s re-election campaign, Axelrod’s political consultancy was propelled into the political limelight. In the years that followed, a number of African-American candidates flocked to Axelrod, in hopes that he might similarly help them win political office. Most prominent among these were Carol Moseley-Braun, who in 1992 became the first black woman elected to the U.S. Senate, and Deval Patrick, the first African-American elected governor of Massachusetts (in 2006).

Other top-echelon Democrats whom Axelrod advised included Patrick Kennedy (congressional campaign in Rhode Island), Rod Blagojevich (gubernatorial campaign in Illinois), Hillary Clinton (2000 U.S. Senate campaign in New York), Eliot Spitzer (2006 gubernatorial campaign in New York), Chris Dodd (U.S. Senate campaign in Connecticut), John Edwards (2004 presidential campaign), and Rahm Emanuel (House of Representatives campaign in 2002). Moreover, Axelrod was Emanuel's chief political advisor when Emanuel helped stage the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in 2006. Between 2001 and 2007, the candidates whom Axelrod's consulting firm represented won 33 of their 42 races.

Axelrod and his consultancy were hired not only by scores of Democratic politicians, but also by the Democratic National Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Governors Association, the AFL-CIO, the AFSCME, the SEIU, and the Working Families Party...Read more:  David Axelrod - Discover the Networks