David Axelrod, Obama’s top strategist, also attributed Clinton’s two point lead in Indiana to Limbaugh’s scheme, speaking to reporters Tuesday night , according to the Wall Street Journal.
Axelrod is the senior partner of AKP Message & Media and was a political writer for the Chicago Tribune. He is also a supporter of Cook County Commissioner Forrest Claypool, who helped Axelrod found his firm (under the name Axelrod and Associates).
He can be cut-throat. He believes that if you’re in a race, you beat the other side by almost any means necessary. Barack Obama’s strategist is genial, courteous — and ruthless when he has to be.
Although Axelrod rose fast at the Tribune, it was not fast enough for him. He left to set up as a political consultant, and has since helped in the campaigns of an estimated hundred politicians from Chicago and across the country. Most of them are liberal, reflecting his own politics, and many of them are black. But he is not in it just out of a sense of idealism: his company, AKP Message and Media, has made millions. He met Obama in Chicago in 1992, tipped off by a mutual friend that he was someone to watch. The two were regulars at Chicago’s hang-out for journalists and politicians, Manny’s Deli. In 2002, Obama asked for his help in running for the senate and they have been together since.
