Longtime Democratic operative and Obama aide David Axelrod tried to talk the president out of running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, according to Axelrod’s upcoming memoir to be published Tuesday.
Axelrod writes that he suggested Obama instead mount a primary challenge to incumbent U.S. Rep. Danny Davis (D-Ill.) or run for mayor of Chicago upon the rumored imminent departure of longtime Mayor Richard Daley. (Daley ultimately stepped down in 2011.) The Senate was judged to be too unrealistic.
“After all, he had just failed badly in a House race in a largely black district. Now he wanted to aim higher — a black man from the South Side of Chicago with no money, no statewide organization, and precious little name recognition,” Axelrod writes in his new book Believer: My 40 Years In Politics, an advance copy of which was obtained by The Huffington Post. “And that’s before you considered the problem that Obama’s exotic surname rhymed with that of the hated terrorist who, one year earlier, had masterminded the horrific 9/11 attacks that killed three thousand Americans.”
Axelrod also reveals that two other Illinois Democratic candidates approached him about assisting their 2004 Senate bids, then-Comptroller Dan Hynes and businessman Blair Hull.
–
Obama would keep Gates on as secretary of defense.
Meanwhile, the ailing Ted Kennedy had a VP pitch of his own. He recommended that Obama choose Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) for the post. The two had served together as Massachusetts senators for more than two decades, but the idea of tapping the party’s most recent presidential nominee was judged too “odd.”
Obama later named Kerry as secretary of state.
