April 24, 2008 (LPAC)--When Lyndon LaRouche associates Mark Fairchild and Janice Hart won majorities in the 1986 Illinois Democratic Party primary election for lieutenant governor and secretary of state, the financier establishment -- against whom they had energetically campaigned -- went into a panic.
Political consultant David Axelrod, who today runs Barack Obama's Presidential campaign, was in 1986 managing the campaign of Adlai Stevenson III for governor. Axelrod told Stevenson he should quit the race, rather than run in the general election on the same, Democratic, ticket with the LaRouche supporters. "I thought he should resign. He couldn't run with those maniacs," Axelrod said later.
Stevenson decided to quit the Democrats but to run as a third party candidate. Axelrod later recalled how Stevenson fared, under his guidance: "In the following months, Stevenson was battered by the press and deserted by the politicians. It reached the point of the absurd. It was the political equivalent of AIDS." (As reported in Chicago magazine, December 1987). David Axelrod grew up in New York City, where his mother, Myril Axelrod, was vice president of the Young & Rubicam advertising agency and was a pioneer of the use of "focus groups" for profiling the population.
Attending the University of Chicago beginning in 1972, majoring in political science, Axelrod became associated with the financier-directed "political reform" movement centered at that University. While he was writing articles for the Hyde Park Herald, he was taken under the wing of Don Rose, a political operative of the Public Administration Service school at the University.
That school was a component of the notorious 1313 building complex at the University of Chicago, a national center for the manipulation of America's public policy and municipal administrations. According to a 2004 article in the Hyde Park Herald, "1313 grew from a 1930 lunchtime conversation in Geneva, Switzerland between [University official Louis] Brownlow and Beardsley Ruml. Ruml was executive director of the Spelman Fund of New York, a relatively new entity created to disburse Rockefeller dollars. Brownlow pressed his case for a public administration clearing house, Ruml enthusiastically embraced the idea and, in 1937 the Spelman Fund disbursed $1 million to the University of Chicago to underwrite the construction of what became 1313." (Mr. Ruml also helped organize the fascist psychaitry enterprise known as the Josiah Macy Foundation.)
Don Rose recommended young Axelrod for an intern's job at the Chicago Tribune daily newspaper, where the intensely plugged-in Axelrod eventually rose to become political editor. Don Rose later told Chicago magazine, "Axelrod was the first political reporter at the Trib who was really associated with the liberal reform movement. He was sympathetic to the movement ... and he developed a lot of contacts. One of the reasons he looked good was because the people he developed associations with were on the ascendancy...."
In 1984, Axelrod quit the Tribune to manage Paul Simon's senate race, followed later by jobs with Stevenson, Harold Washington, and others. Throughout, Axelrod has been identified with the movement for political "reforms" -- such as privatization, budget cuts, etc. -- representing the oligarchs at the University of Chicago and their financier sponsors. David Axelrod is the Obama campaign's overall director; Axelrod's partner (in the firm AKP Media), David Plouffe, is Obama's official campaign manager; and Axelrod's other partner, John Del Cecato, is a strategist for the campaign.
