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Celeb Endorsements

With the campaign trail blazing hot, many celebrities are weighing in on who's the best candidate for president. "The benefits of a celebrity endorsement outweigh any downside," says Philip Molfese, president and co-founder of Grainger Terry Inc., a Chicago political consulting and public relations firm. "As long as you pick the right celebrity -- someone who won't embarrass you."

George Clooney says he'll do whatever it takes to help Barack Obama -- even shutting up.

Chicagoans Hope Obama's Election Will Help Bring Olympics to Windy City
Barack Obama's election could help Chicago in its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Barack Obama's election could give his hometown a huge leg up in its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.

City officials in Chicago are giddy over the potential heft a hometown president might give them in their effort to beat out Tokyo, Rio de Janeiro and Madrid, the three other host-city finalists.

The International Olympic Committee will make its decision next October in Copenhagen, Denmark, and some wonder whether Obama, who has openly touted the Windy City's bid, can help seal the deal.

"It puts a lot of focus on Chicago," Patrick Ryan, head of the Chicago 2016 bid, said of Obama's election. "My discussions over the last two and a half years with IOC members leaves no doubt that the president-elect is very popular around the world and with IOC members. It can't help but reflect positively."

But Ryan said he didn't see Obama's election as a "sea change" for his city's bid yet.

"It helps us tremendously," Chicago Mayor Richard Daley told local reporters Wednesday. "But you can't take it for granted."

According to the IOC's finalist report early this year Tokyo and Madrid both ranked higher than Chicago.

Japanese Olympic Committee President Tsunekazu Takeda hinted that he was a little worried, pondering in an interview with Japanese media how IOC members would react should Obama appear in a presentation on behalf of his city.

"Mr. Obama is popular and good at speeches, so things could get tough for Japan," another Japanese Olympic Committee board member said.

Madrid's deputy mayor reportedly said Obama would have no bearing on the decision, even though "the Chicago candidacy will try and take advantage."

The Chicago Web site promoting the city's bid features a video on its home page of President-elect Obama discussing the host-city selection process back in June.

"Bringing the Olympics to Chicago will be a capstone of the success that we've had over the last couple of decades," Obama said at the time.

Now that he's won office, the economy, the War on Terror, global warming, health care and a host of other issues will no doubt take priority over playing top cheerleader for Chicago's Olympic aspirations.

But Chicagoans, who are hard at work trying to draw on Obama's fame as a tourism boon, say he's already done wonders for their city's profile.

"Certainly this helps Chicago, and its chances to get the Olympics," said Chicago political consultant Philip Molfese. "An Obama victory changes our perception around the world."

The Windy City got high exposure on Election Night, when Obama gave his historic victory speech in Grant Park, on Chicago's waterfront.

Chicago 2016 spokesman Patrick Sandusky told FOXNews.com the outdoor rally was a "fantastic showpiece" for the city.

"His rally was walking distance from 19 proposed (Olympic) venues," he said. "It really was an opportunity for the world to see the kind of city-central, lakefront Olympic Games that Chicago is proposing."

FOXNews.com's Judson Berger and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

What’s in a Name? Lots

August 2008 Issue
By Stephanie Francis Ward

Various bar associations found Michael B. Hyman “highly qualified” when he ran for judge in Cook County, Ill., and the former appellate lawyer—who also had numerous jury trials under his belt—had only recently served as president of the Chicago Bar Association.

But he was still worried. Hyman, currently sitting by appointment on the Cook County Circuit Court bench, was listed last on the February 2008 primary election ballot, and it had been 12 years since someone with a Jewish surname won a countywide election.

“He was extremely well-qualified and had all this on paper,” says Philip Molfese, a Chicago political consultant who worked on Hyman’s campaign. “I told him that all that was great, but his last name was going to be an extremely hard sell.”

If Hyman had a last name that sounded Irish, getting elected would be easier, says Molfese, explaining that surnames associated with the Emerald Isle usually go over well among Cook County voters.

Having a preference for certain names in judicial races, political consultants say, is not unique to Cook County. People often vote for candidates they think are like them.

“In New York City women tend to do exceptionally well, and Jewish women have a higher probability of being elected judge in Manhattan,” says Hank Sheinkopf, a political consultant there. “But in Brooklyn, black women do well.”

Los Angeles County voters often prefer candidates whose last names appear to be Hispanic or white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, says Fred Huebscher, a Hermosa Beach, Calif., political consultant. In 2006 he worked on a judicial campaign for Lynn Olson, an attorney who had left the law to run a bagel and sandwich shop.

Olson ran against Dzintra Janavs, a sitting judge who received an “exceptionally well-qualified” rating from the Los Angeles County Bar Association.

“People couldn’t pronounce that name, they didn’t know what [ethnicity] she was and they didn’t know if she was a man or a woman,” Huebscher says. “You couldn’t come up with a worse name if you tried. I knew we could win that race.”

And they did. Olson, who was found “not qualified” by the Los Angeles County Bar Association, won 54 percent of the vote.

Names are so important in judicial races, Huebscher says, that he sometimes advises candidates to tweak theirs. Hyman says that some told him he should run as “Michael O’Hyman.”

“I wouldn’t do that,” he says. Instead, he devised an association strategy. While his surname might lose him votes, Hyman thought he could win if he got enough votes in the county’s traditionally black wards. He hired Wallace “Gator” Bradley, a black political consultant who is well-known in Cook County for both his community outreach work and his association with the Gangster Disciples, one of Chicago’s largest street gangs.

A convicted felon, Bradley claims to have turned his life around. Hyman took Bradley at his word, and that went over well with the voters he courted.

“He hired this person knowing he had been in trouble 20 years ago, who was good at what he did now,” Molfese says.

The plan did not go over well with Bryan Sexton, a gang prosecutor who ran against Hyman, or with some of Cook County’s black lawyers and judges.

But the strategy hit the right note with voters. Hyman won the primary and will run unopposed, as a Democrat, in the November 2008 general election.

Seeking to recapture the message of racial unity that marked his campaign kick-off more than a year ago, Sen. Barack Obama spoke to supporters at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

The Democrat denounces his longtime pastor's incendiary comments but says he cannot disown the man -- or his own mixed background. He urges Americans to move forward.

By Peter Wallsten and Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
March 19, 2008

PHILADELPHIA -- From the earliest days of his career, Barack Obama has sought to assure black voters that a political leader of mixed race, coming from the outpost of Hawaii, could understand the resentments of an African American community shaped by slavery and segregation.

On Tuesday, Obama tried to explain that anger to voters who have been repelled by racially incendiary comments from his longtime pastor.

In a speech widely seen as his most important to date, Obama again denounced the comments by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., which have played continuously on television news shows and threatened to undermine Obama's campaign theme of uniting a fractured America. At the same time, the Democratic presidential candidate asked voters to understand the frustrations and anger that gave rise to the preacher's condemnation of America as racist and brutal -- "the U.S. of K.K.K.A."

"That anger is not always productive. . . . But the anger is real; it is powerful," Obama said. "And to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races."

While asking all Americans to sympathize with blacks, Obama said he understood the anger that some whites feel over affirmative action or "when they're told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced."

"It's a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years. . . . But I have asserted a firm conviction -- a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people -- that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds," he said.

A rare perspective

Speaking at a museum dedicated to the U.S. Constitution, Obama in effect offered his candidacy as the next chapter in a story of racial tension and reconciliation that has unfolded since the country's founding. The son of a Kenyan father and a white mother with Kansas roots, he spoke in sweeping terms about his unusual perspective on race, and more than ever elevated it as essential to his White House campaign.

It was a speech that seemed unlikely to come from a politician viewed as simply white or black. Obama rejected the most controversial of Wright's comments, while saying he could never renounce the man who had helped introduce the senator to Christianity, officiated at his wedding and baptized his children.

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," Obama said. "I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me . . . but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

He called for Americans to "realize that your dreams do not have to come at the expense of my dreams."

In this political season, he said, "we can tackle race only as spectacle -- as we did in the O.J. trial. . . . We can play Rev. Wright's sermons on every channel every day, and talk about them from now until the election."

Wright -- who penned the phrase "audacity of hope" that Obama later used as the title of his second book -- became the center of controversy after portions of his sermons were posted on the Internet and shown on television. They included Wright railing against the U.S. government for adopting what he said were racist policies and then wanting blacks to "sing 'God Bless America.' No, no, no," he said. "God damn America."

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Wright accused the United States of supporting "state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans," and then being "indignant because the stuff we have done ourselves is now brought right back into our own frontyards."

It was unclear whether voters who previously thought Wright's comments reflected badly on Obama would see them in a different light after the candidate's speech Tuesday. But several analysts said the Illinois senator took a significant step in overcoming what has emerged as the most serious crisis in his campaign.

"It helps to soften the negativity of it," said Philip Molfese, president of Grainger Terry Inc., a Chicago-based political consulting and crisis communication firm. "And a lot of people will respect the fact that he stood by the man but denounced the comments."

"In my world, Crisis Management 101, the rule is: Don't run from the issue. Tackle it head-on," said Kevin Feeley, president of Bellevue Communications Group, a Philadelphia firm. "He not only tackled it head-on, [but] in the course of distancing himself from the remarks . . . Obama somehow managed to change the issue from a discussion about Rev. Wright to a discussion about race and its impact on all of us in America."

Others, however, said the tempest would not fade. Some conservatives continued to use the controversy to attack Obama, who has claimed an ability to reach across the political spectrum and has drawn significant numbers of Republican supporters in some Democratic primaries.

"This is a core question of character," Newt Gingrich, a Republican and former House speaker, said on Fox News. He said that either Obama should have confronted Wright about his comments earlier, "or he didn't actually mind it as long as it wasn't public."

Even before Wright's words were widely publicized, race had become a polarizing factor in Obama's contest with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Initially, blacks were slow to warm to Obama's candidacy. But once he gained traction among white voters in states such as Iowa, African American voters grew more excited. Now they vote for him in overwhelming numbers.

Early in the primary season, Clinton was criticized for comments that some thought diminished the role of black activists in the civil rights movement. And her husband, former President Bill Clinton, came under fire for appearing to belittle Obama's appeal across racial lines.

Last week, one top Clinton backer, former vice presidential candidate Geraldine A. Ferraro, suggested that Obama was succeeding because he was black.

Obama's association with Wright has challenged the campaign from the start. The pastor had been scheduled to deliver an invocation at Obama's official campaign announcement in March 2007 but was abruptly removed from the program -- a change that campaign aides acknowledged this week was made in anticipation of the controversy that would surely surround him.

Writing on the Huffington Post website last week and in interviews with Chicago newspapers, Obama had said that when he sat in the pews at Trinity United Church of Christ, he had not heard Wright make some of his more controversial statements.

On Tuesday, saying "nagging questions" remain for some voters, Obama offered a different account.

"Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes," Obama said.

"Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely -- just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed."

With his speech, Obama tried to pull off an unusual balancing act, reassuring white voters who may have felt threatened by Wright while convincing blacks that he was not abandoning an outspoken leader in their community.

"If he had, he would have shamed us. Shamed blacks. Been just another politician, making promises and lying about his past to get ahead," said Tyrone Wallace, 42, a single father who works in construction and watched the speech from a relative's home near Wright's Chicago church. "I thank the good Lord that he didn't shun him."

Obama said Wright's anger stemmed from his experience in an earlier, segregated era that many today might not understand. But he also said his longtime spiritual advisor had made a "profound mistake" in preaching at times "as if our society was static, as if no progress has been made."

Obama's Friends Appear Poised to Hold
Clout in Washington
Those who helped Barack Obama achieve his historic victory may be in line to have the next president's ear.

His successful bid to be America's 44th president was aided by unprecedented fundraising, and he gained the early support of mutinous Democrats who rebelled against the better known and more experienced candidates in the primaries.

Now Obama's effort to craft his administration and his agenda before he becomes president on Jan. 20 could be influenced in large part by those who helped put him in the position to be making those decisions.

Much as George W. Bush brought his Texas advisers to Washington, and Bill Clinton tapped his Arkansas connections before that, Obama can be expected to bring Chicago to the nation's capital on Inauguration Day -- and even before.

Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and his Senate chief of staff Pete Rouse were named as two of three co-chairs for his transition team on Wednesday. The other chairman is former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta.

And Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel has accepted Obama's offer to be his chief of staff, according to a Democratic source who spoke with FOX News.

But dozens of Chicago advisers, officials and fund-raisers have helped grease Obama's ascent from community organizer to president-elect.

"There are a lot of people in the city who feel they are sort of on the short list," said Chicago political consultant Philip Molfese, president of Grainger Terry, Inc.

The campaign figures potentially in line to head to Washington would be chief strategist David Axelrod, a prominent figure in Chicago politics, and campaign manager David Plouffe.

Obama gave them both a hearty shout-out during his victory address in Chicago's Grant Park Tuesday night.

Molfese said officials and former officials in Illinois may also be looking to ride Obama's coattails. He mentioned Illinois Senate President Emil Jones as someone "instrumental" in Obama's formative period as a presidential candidate.

Another key figure from Obama's home turf is fellow Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, one of his earliest supporters on the national level.

Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein said Durbin is likely next in line to be Senate majority leader, aided by Obama's sway.

"People like [Durbin], their power's going to be enhanced, their stature's going to be enhanced," Gerstein said.

Obama's fundraising was broad-based, driven in large part on the Web by small donors he has never met. Many donors gave the maximum $2,300 -- but Obama raised more than $600 million as of September, so even they will likely get lost in the shuffle.

Instead, the people calling in favors may be the early supporters, the critical voices who touted Obama when he needed them most.

Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, one of the first of the party elders to pass the torch to Obama, is reportedly angling for secretary of state.

"I would not be surprised if we see a Colin Powell as a part of his administration," said the New York Post's Charles Hurt.

Powell endorsed Obama late in the game, but his endorsement may have nudged right-leaning undecideds toward the Democrat in the closing days of the campaign.

Another way Obama can deliver some payback is in guiding the replacement process for his own Senate seat, as well as Emanuel's, should he leave the House of Representatives to join the administration.

"I would imagine he will have a heavy say in who those replacements are," Gerstein said.

Gerstein said he expects both Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton to have Obama's ear going forward, as well. Sen. Clinton could be a critical ally for him in the Senate, and Obama would be "foolhardy" not to seek the former president's political advice, he said.

Rahm pick 'refutes' call for bipartisanship

Andrea Billups (Contact)
Sunday, November 16, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama promised daughters Malia and Sasha a new puppy when they move into the White House in January.

But with the appointment of Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, some are speculating that Mr. Obama already will have a political pit bull to occupy a watchdog place of power right outside the Oval Office.

Mr. Emanuel, the brash Illinois congressman and Chicago political operative known for his fundraising prowess, brings a bracing partisan edge to the thoughtful and chill public personality projected by Mr. Obama, whose campaign pledge was to move far from politics as usual in Washington.

"Let us resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long," Mr. Obama said at his emotional and historic election night rally in Chicago's Grant Park.

And yet, with the Emanuel pick, political opponents say they are left to wonder if those words were simply empty, gassy "come together" rhetoric, far removed from the new president's intention to govern as the president of all the people once he takes office.

"Rahm Emanuel is clearly a hyperpartisan whose naming undermines the very premise of Obama's candidacy," says Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz. "Obama said he was going to be someone who exhibited change and who would reach across the aisle, and yet he chooses one of the most partisan political insiders in Washington to run his White House."

True, Mr. Emanuel's Democratic legacy is the stuff of Hollywood, the oft-recounted anecdotes of his political life at once humorous, vicious and theatrical. He is reported to have inspired the Josh Lyman character on television's "West Wing," and one of his two brothers, Ariel, served as the inspiration for Hollywood uber-agent Ari Gold on HBO's "Entourage" show. His own mother reportedly calls him by his nickname: Rahmbo.

As ruthless people go, he's an 11 on a scale of 10; one political friend jokingly called him "a cross between a hemorrhoid and a toothache." He was a ballet dancer growing up, and some have speculated that the rigors, pain and intense discipline of the dance helped shape his inner-moxie and drive to plow ahead in politics.

Among the better stories from his past: Mr. Emanuel once employed "Godfather"-style tactics and sent a political operative a stinking, dead fish to signal his disapproval. During his days in Little Rock working on former President Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, Mr. Emanuel shook up a dinner meeting by stabbing a steak knife into a table and screeching "Dead!" - a la "Animal House" - after reciting the names of a list of political detractors.

He also seems well aware of his public image as aggressive and not exactly lovable. At a Washington Press Club dinner in February, where he was among the guest speakers, Mr. Emanuel tried to make fun of his infamy, noting that he was much different from his congressional colleague, Sen. John Cornyn, who was also a speaker.

If you called central casting and asked to send a senator, they'd send John," he said. "If you asked for a terrorist, they'd send me."

On Capitol Hill, his style seems to be push ahead and ignore his critics. "I didn't come here to win a popularity contest with them," he said in one published media account. "I wake up some mornings hating me, too."

Media accounts have also recounted the fit and attractive Mr. Emanuel's fondness for dropping the F-bomb, an emphatic and profane way of getting his point across with passion - particularly when referring to Republicans.

"I like Rahm," says Donna Brazile, one of Al Gore's presidential advisers, in an e-mail. "He's smart, tenacious, knows both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue and will pull together a terrific team for President-elect Obama."

Even Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who worked with Mr. Emanuel to shore up specifics of the presidential election debate schedule on behalf of Sen. John McCain, praised Mr. Emanuel's selection as "a wise choice." He called him "well-suited" for White House chief of staff.

"I worked closely with him during the presidential debate negotiations, which were completed in record time," Mr. Graham said in a statement. "When we hit a rough spot, he always looked for a path forward. ... He's tough but fair. Honest, direct and candid."

Some who know him in Chicago say his extreme tendencies in his political youth have given way to a softer, gentler Rahm - kinda, sorta.

"He's tough as nails with a rubber coating now," says Chicago political consultant Kitty Kurth, who thinks Mr. Emanuel has grown up since his 1994 marriage to Amy Rule and the birth of their three children.

In marrying, Mrs. Rule converted to Judaism, a faith that shaped Mr. Emanuel's life as he grew up in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette, Ill., the son of a pediatrician father and a mother who was a social worker.

This time, when Mr. Emanuel got the call to come to Washington, he paused for a moment - instead of running into the fire - and acknowledged publicly that this was a difficult choice that would no doubt affect his family. He considered their needs, too.

"Being married and having kids has toned him down a lot," she said. "When he's at home in his district, he brings the kids to a lot of things. I think there is probably a lot different Rahm than what you see publicly. The dad and the husband Rahm is probably much different than his earlier incarnation."

Political consultant Philip Molfese says Mr. Emanuel's political skill inside the famed world of Chicago-style politics has been his ability to shake trees and do what it takes to make things happen, particularly in raising money.

"He certainly has a hard-charging personality, but I think that is only in the interest of getting the job done," Mr. Molfese said.

Mr. Obama, it seems, agrees. "No one I know is better at getting things done than Rahm Emanuel," he said upon announcing his selection as chief of staff.

Mr. Molfese, who cites Mr. Emanuel's middle-class upbringing, which included teenage stints working at Arby's, thinks "he can connect well with all types of people from different backgrounds."

"I think he is very involved in his faith and is very family focused," he said. "Those parts of him are more private, and I don't think people really see that, but I do think they shape who he really is. ... Here, he's viewed as sort of a fresh, new ideas guy, hard-driving but also with a common man's touch. I think the rest of it is overblown and overplayed."

Miss Kurth says she thought for a time how the selection might benefit the seemingly no-drama Obama, then decided that "it totally made sense." Mr. Emanuel's past White House experience, his work helping President Clinton smooth the way with Congress in the early days of his presidency and his own experience on the Hill along with knowing the current players, gives him an experienced edge to hit the ground running in difficult days.

At 49, Mr. Emanuel also is close to Mr. Obama's age of 47 - they share a generation - and is among his devoted inner circle of Chicago-based go-to guys.

"I think it's actually perfect in a weird way," she said of their pairing, which puts Mr. Emanuel at the doorstep of power, just a step away from the Oval Office and in charge of who gets time with the president and who is turned away. "Their styles are so different, but I think Rahm will be the tough guy who lets President Obama stay on track. While I was surprised at first, the more I think about it, the more it will work, a very yin-yang, good cop-bad cop" relationship.

Already, Republicans aren't so sure and cast an uneasy eye as to the meaning of Mr. Obama's first pick and what it portends as he pieces together his administration. If the new spirit is bipartisan, they wonder, why did Mr. Obama, the change candidate, pick as his trusted wingman a congressman with a track record of feather-ruffling who voted with Democrats 98 percent of the time during 2007?

House Republican Leader John Boehner, Ohio Republican, issued a statement upon Mr. Emanuel's announcement as chief of staff, calling it "an ironic choice for a president-elect who has promised to change Washington, make politics more civil and govern from the center."

While Mr. Boehner's spokesman declined to elaborate on his concerns beyond the leader's public statement, the RNC's Mr. Diaz says Republicans are right to express skepticism, given Mr. Emanuel's history, that it isn't a choice that will bring about progress in Washington.

"Only time will tell," Mr. Diaz says. "But this so totally refutes and undermines any claims that Obama has made to want to work with both sides of the aisle."