Authors: Edward McClelland
Welfare reform needed a legislative oversight program, because how else would welfare families be heard? They couldn't hire lobbyists; they didn't buy tickets to fund-raisers. The lower class and the political class only met by accident. It had happened to him the weekend before. He'd been out in the alley behind his condo, smoking a cigar, when he'd seen a family searching for cans to recycle. The father was pushing a shopping cart; the mother, a stroller.
“This was their visible means of support,” Obama said. “This is the job that awaited them if they weren't on welfare. We have an obligation to that family. We have an obligation to that child. I strongly urge thatâalthough we've taken a good step on this billâthat we look at this carefully and continue to make a commitment to ensuring that all Illinois children and all Illinois families have an opportunity to succeed in this economy.”
The Gift Ban Act was another bill that put Obama on the wrong side of poker pal Jacobs, the carnivorous Mississippi River pol. Jacobs reveled in expensive dinners with lobbyists, while Obama was one of the few legislators who always paid his half of the check. In 1997, Paul Simon, who had just retired from the U.S. Senate, asked the legislature to form a blue-ribbon panel on ethics reform. Ordinarily, requests like that were filed away with proposals to create a unicameral legislature or move the state capital to Metropolis. Illinois hadn't changed its ethics law since the mid-1970s, when it enacted a campaign disclosure system in response to Watergate. It was one of the few states with no limits on campaign contributions or gifts to politicians. One promiscuous lobbyist stood in the capitol rotunda with a stack of checks, which he dealt out to departing senators. Some legislators began their day by trying to figure out who would take them to lunch.
But 1997 was different. The state's most powerful officeholders had been caught in scandals. Governor Jim Edgar's largest campaign contributor, Management Services of Illinois, had received several no-bid contracts from the state and then bilked taxpayers out of $7 million. In Secretary of State George Ryan's office, clerks were selling trucker's licenses in exchange for bribes, which ended up in Ryan's campaign fund. One of the illegal truckers caused an accident that killed six children. Illinois politicians reform themselves as often as a mountain man bathes: only when the stench becomes unbearable. This was one of those times.
Also, Paul Simon was asking. Illinois's most popular politician, and its most honest, he hadn't inspired the term “simon-pure,” but it certainly applied to him. In the 1950s, Simon had made his name as a muckraking small-town newspaper editor, exposing gambling and prostitution in small towns across the river from St. Louis. After winning a seat in the legislature, he furthered his goody-goody image by writing an expose on his colleagues for
Harper's
. In the U.S. Senate, he reported every gift, right down to a five-dollar box of cookies. Simon's scrupulous accounting won him the “Straight Arrow Award” in a poll of congressional staffers. Upon leaving the Senate in 1997, his retirement project was a public policy institute at Southern Illinois University. The ethics bill was its first undertaking.
Illinois's sleazy political culture was largely a product of the Chicago Machine, which lived on long after Tammany Hall and other big-city boss operations were put out of business. But even Illinoisans grow tired of kickbacks and insider contracts, which means that the state also provides a unique platform for reformers. You can't have Eliot Ness without Al Capone. Goo-goos and grafters, as a popular book about Chicago politics put it. Paul Simon was a goo-goo. So was Abner Mikva. Both recommended Obama to Emil Jones, who eagerly appointed him to the reform panel. Let a freshman from Hyde Park tell the guys they can't have dinner at the Sangamo Club anymore. Denny Jacobs sure wouldn't do it. As Jacobs liked to put it, “The public doesn't care about ethics. I think ethics comes next to athlete's feet when it comes to tripping the public's trigger. What it does trigger is the media.”
Working with Simon and his institute, the panel came up with a bill that prohibited lobbyists from handing out donations on state property and banned fund-raisers within fifty miles of Springfield. If a lobbyist took a legislator or a state employee out to eat, he couldn't spend more than $75. Legislators could no longer accept sports tickets or vacations. Obama wanted to limit campaign contributions, too, but that would have struck at the power of the house and senate leaders. They collected huge sums of money from lobbyists, then doled it out to grateful members. Finally, the bill required that contributions be posted on the Internet, which in 1997 was still a novelty to most politicians.
The Gift Ban Act passed the Republican-controlled senate with no trouble. George Ryan was running for governor, and he didn't want the newspapers harping on ethics. (Ryan won the election and served four years as governor, followed by six years in a federal prison for corruption.) It was a sensitive subject for the secretary of state, who had vacationed in Jamaica on a lobbyist's dime. In the house, members worried that they'd be fined or jailed for niggling violations. One representative complained about the ban on using campaign funds for personal use. Would he be breaking the law by buying a patriotic shirt for a Fourth of July parade, then wearing it to a family picnic? Another wanted to know whether a contribution was “face-to-face” if he turned his back to receive it.
The bill impressed editorial boards and made Obama a go-to guy for ethical reform groups, but inside the capitol, it reinforced his image as a self-righteous goo-goo.
“Carrying the mantle of ethics in Springfield makes you a bit of an outsider,” says Cynthia Canary of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, a group whose cause is as idealistic, and as hopeless, as temperance in Ireland. In the immortal words of Alderman Paddy Bauler, “Chicago ain't ready for reform!” (He later expanded on this with a quote that Obama's detractors would have found amusing: “Christ! Who the hell would want to live here if it was? This is the big city, boy! This ain't Honolulu!”)
Denny Jacobs was the first to flout the new law. He held a fund-raiser at Norb Andy's, a restaurant famous for serving that Springfield delicacy, the horseshoe: a hamburger patty on an open bun, smothered in French fries and gooey cheese. No idealist, Jacobs was always friendly to his political enemies: He took time out from his donors to offer soft drinks to the protesters on the sidewalk.
The Gift Ban Act was declared unconstitutional by a friendly judge in Will County, but the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the law on appeal. Its most important legacy was electronic filing. Before the Internet, journalists and other busybodies had to fill out forms in triplicate to inspect campaign contributions. Afterward, anyone with a computer could learn that, say, the chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee was taking money from a paving contractor. Lobbyists are still paying off legislators, but at least now everyone can watch it happen.
In Chicago, a state senator is not a big wheel. Downstate, in rustic Central and Southern Illinois, legislators are local heroes. A Decatur housewife who sees her senator in the grocery store has a dinnertime story. Most Chicagoans can't even name their state legislators. Obama could shop at the Hyde Park Co-op or browse at 57th Street Books without anyone whispering “
There's Senator Obama
.” Aldermen don't suffer the same anonymity. The city councilânow
that's
a big deal in Chicago. Both Mayors Daley began their political careers in the state senate, only to leave for more glamorous local offices.
Why is the legislature such an ignoble political backwater? First of all, it meets in faraway Springfield. Chicagoans also assume that their legislators are sprockets in their local machines, puppets of the ward bosses who put them in office. (Rod Blagojevich got his start in politics because his father-in-law, a powerful alderman, wanted to demonstrate his clout by electing a state representative.) Once these half-bright hacks get to Springfield, most of the decisions are made by the “Four Tops”âthe house and senate party leaders who control all the campaign funds.
Hyde Parkers are less cynical about their politicians than most Chicagoans, but they're also less starstruck. After all, a U of C English professor earns twice as much money as a state senator. And fawning over petty elected officials is not Hyde Park's idea of sophistication. Obama worked hard to get attention. He served spaghetti at the IVI-IPO's annual fund-raiser at the United Church of Hyde Park. He was a “celebrity judge” for the Harper Court Art Council's Second Annual Creative Writing Contest. He flipped pancakes at the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club's annual fund-raiser and marched in colonial attire during the Fourth of July parade on Fifty-third Street.
Obama also had a column in the
Hyde Park Herald
, “Springfield Report.” Every local pol got one. In an early “Springfield Report,” he attacked Republicans for refusing to pass limits on campaign contributionsâ“I, for one, continue to be a strong advocate of contribution limits and public financing of campaigns; without such limits and public investment, it's hard to see how we can fully eliminate the influence of big money over the process.” It was not a surprising viewpoint for a junior member of the minority party representing a goo-goo district. Later on in the column, Obama added a rare personal note to his bureaucratic missive: “Some of you may have noticed my absence at this year's Fourth of July parade. I had a good excuse: that was the day that my wife, Michelle, gave birth to our first child, Malia Ann Obama (8 pounds, 15 ounces). Both mother and daughter are doing great, and we wish to thank all of you who sent cards and called to wish us the best. Hopefully, Malia will be joining us at next year's parade/birthday celebration!”
For a freshman, Obama ran up an impressive record of bringing public works to his district. In 1998, for example, the state set aside $44.6 million to rebuild the eroding Lake Michigan shoreline south of Fifty-fifth Street. In reality, Obama wasn't responsible for bringing home that big money. It was his state representative, Barbara Flynn Currie, who became house majority leader the year Obama joined the senate. Currie was a more effective state legislator, and as someone who'd represented Hyde Park since Obama was a high school senior in Hawaii, she was more in touch with neighborhood issues.
Obama didn't have a lot of power or influence in the capitol. He occupied a one-room office in a crowded suite on the mezzanine, a half floor where junior senators are hidden away. He wasn't earning much money, either, especially for a young father with a mortgage and student loans from Harvard. The senate gig, which was part-time, paid $48,403 a year. Most legislators had a law practice, a family business, or a farm. At first, Obama thought he could continue as an associate at his law firm, but after a few weeks in Springfield, he called Judd Miner and told him the legislature was too much work.
“Judd, this is unfair to you guys,” he said. “This is going to be much more time-consuming than I thought, and rather than get paid regularly while I'm here, I'd rather just keep track of my time. Let's talk when I come back in May and see what a fair arrangement is.”
Obama was turning down a salary he could have collected with very little effort. That was a testament to his honesty, Miner thought. Obama hung on to his corner office and the title of “counsel,” but his brief career as a practicing attorney was over.
That meant he needed a job, though. There was an offer on the table from U of C. Obama went back to Douglas Baird with a proposal that would make him less than a full-time professor but more than a part-time lecturer: a two-thirds teaching load, no expectation of academic writing, and full benefits, which would include health insurance, and Lab School tuition for his children. He'd teach Mondays and Fridays, the days the senate wasn't in session. It was an unusual request, but Obama was starting to get a sense of his own exceptionalism. Most schools, most law firms, would jump through hoops to keep the first black president of the
Harvard Law Review
around. U of C said yes. Baird had to clear it with the provost, whose only reservation was giving Obama the title “senior lecturer,” which was usually reserved for federal judges and other eminences. But Obama got the title, too. Baird thought it was a great deal. The school was getting more work out of a popular lecturer, and when Obama grew bored with the lowly position of state senatorâas a man of his gifts was bound to doâhe might consider teaching law full-time.
Most Chicagoans look on any part of Illinois south of Interstate 80 as an underpopulated, uncultured rural appendage, good for growing corn and soybeans but not worth visiting. Obama, the hip urban senator who knew more about Kenyan village life than he did about small-town America, wanted to see the rest of the state. Through his work with Paul Simon, he got a chance. Simon lived in the southern marches of Illinois, a region known as Little Egypt. In the middle of 1997, his public policy institute held a fund-raising dinner in Chicago. Obama attended with John Schmidt, his chief money man from Project Vote! They sat with Steve Scates, a farmer from Shawneetown, across the Ohio River from Kentucky. A heavyset man with a bashful drawl, Scates had been appointed state director of the Farm Service Agency by his old friend Simon. Obama had never been to Little Egypt, which lies far below the Mason-Dixon Line, nearer to Nashville than Chicago. If he was ever going to run for statewide office, though, he'd have to make his Muslim name and his dark face known in all corners of the state. Best to start with Scates, who was an important Democratic donor in his region.
“Even though I'm a state senator from Chicago, I want to know the rest of the state,” he told Scates at that dinner. “I'd like to visit you guys at your farm.”
Scates invited him down. When Obama got back to Springfield, he proposed a trip to his legislative director, Dan Shomon. After session was over, he said, they should drive down south, hitting some of his colleagues' golf outings. Shomon thought it was a grand idea. A former newspaper reporter who had worked eight years in the capitol, he wanted to expose his urbane, overeducated boss to rural life, and, frankly, he also wanted to teach Obama to behave like a commoner. Obama already had a reputation for haughtiness around the capitol. If voters saw him the same way, he'd never get ahead in politics. Obama and Shomon made an unusual-looking pairâObama was tall and lean, while Shomon was squat and bushy haired, with squinty eyes behind thick glasses. But their partnership, which would last until Obama ran for the U.S. Senate, fit into a long tradition of smooth, charismatic politicians and brilliant, untidy sidekicks, each contributing a necessary element for political success. Think of Louis Howe and Franklin D. Roosevelt, Theodore Sorensen and John F. Kennedy, or Karl Rove and George W. Bush. That's who Shomon was to Obama early in his career.