ShareThisBy ALAN FREEMAN
Thursday, January 04, 2007
He trained as a ballet dancer, speaks like a longshoreman and has the competitive drive of a college football coach.
At 47, Rahm Emanuel has emerged as the Democratic Party's not-so-secret weapon, the man credited with turning around the party's electoral fortunes as the main architect of its victory in the Nov. 7 midterm elections.
As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the three-term member of the House who hails from Chicago handpicked candidates, led fund-raising efforts and was a mastermind of the election sweep that saw the Democrats regain both houses of Congress.
As for Emanuel's future now that the elections have been won, he has taken on the role of Democratic caucus chairman _ the fourth-ranking position among the Democrats in the House, but left as chairman of the campaign committee. Yet nobody is predicting a quiet exit from the limelight.
"He can do whatever he wants," Democratic consultant Darin Cline says.
"You could imagine him eventually becoming speaker of the House, mayor of Chicago, governor of Illinois or senator from Illinois," says Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank. "Rahm is a young man and very definitely ambitious."
A high-energy political animal who takes a no-nonsense approach to the task at hand, he frequently uses profanity to get his point across and does not suffer fools easily.
"Rahm is a very determined guy and he definitely has sharp elbows," Ornstein says. "Rahm is tireless and is tough. The name of the game for him is winning seats."
And win seats he did in November's midterm elections. With President Bush's plunging popularity and the damage done to Republicans by the Iraq war, Democrats had been expected to win a 15- or 16-seat majority in the House. But they ended up taking double that number and Emanuel can take credit for much of the bonus, Ornstein said.
Since the days of Lee Atwater, the ruthless GOP campaign organizer for the first President Bush who is credited with destroying the campaign of Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis in 1988, the Republicans have gained a reputation for hardball tactics. Karl Rove, who shepherded George W. Bush's political career from the Texas governorship to the White House, gained an aura of infallibility as the Republicans racked up success after success in congressional and presidential elections.
The Democrats, by contrast, have languished, riven by ideological and personality divisions and a sense that they were simply not as tough as the Rovians when it came to fighting election campaigns. Until Rahm Emanuel, that is.
Emanuel was born in the upper-middle-class Chicago suburb of Wilmette, the second of three sons of an Israeli-born pediatrician who migrated to the United States and his wife, an X-ray technician and daughter of a union organizer.
"We had a very political household," says Ezekiel Emanuel, Rahm's older brother, recalling their youth. He remembers his mother taking him and his two brothers on civil-rights marches in the early 1960s, including one led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Personal achievement was also a major value in the Emanuel household. Ezekiel became a respected oncologist and bioethicist at the U.S. National Institutes of Health while Ari, the youngest Emanuel brother, is a leading Hollywood agent and the apparent inspiration for the character Ari Gold in the TV series "Entourage."
Rahm has also inspired a fictional version of himself from his days working for President Bill Clinton _ presidential aide Josh Lyman in "The West Wing."
"Rahm likes to win," Ezekiel says. "That's true for all of us. Rahm once said to me, 'I'm not interested in moral victories.' "
Thin and wiry, Rahm studied ballet as a teenager and was offered a scholarship with the prestigious Joffrey Ballet. Instead, he traveled east to tony Sarah Lawrence College, graduating in 1981 and going on to earn a master's degree from Northwestern University.
He soon got the political bug, working for Paul Simon's Senate bid in 1984 and later as a fund-raiser for Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. In 1991, he was hired to work in the "war room" of a then-obscure governor from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, along with the legendary James Carville.
After the Clinton victory, Emanuel was rewarded with a job in the White House, but his sometimes-abrasive personality caused him to lose his position as political director. He managed to salvage his reputation and stayed on until 1999, when he decided to leave the public service and get rich.
Moving back to Chicago with his family, Emanuel joined Wasserstein Perella, an investment bank, and in two short years amassed an estimated $18 million, allowing him to return to politics unconcerned about his financial security.
In 2002, he won the Democratic nomination in the traditionally Polish-Catholic north end of Chicago, turning it into a power base from which he has spread his influence within the party.
As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the November midterms, Emanuel helped raise more than $100 million and made sure the Democrats chose candidates who could get elected, particularly in socially conservative areas.
Even though he fits the classic mold of a big-city liberal Democrat, he knew that to snatch seats from the Republicans, Democrats would have to put up candidates who reflected local social values.
By attracting more conservative candidates to run, the Democrats will have to contend with more internal divisions. "Governing is challenging," Emanuel said in a recent interview. "Will we have issues? Yeah. But there is more that unites us."
