Andrew Zajac
The March issue of Vanity Fair has a profile of Barack Obama that includes a slick account of Obama’s courtship of Illinois Senate President Emil Jones in the run-up to the 2004 U.S. Senate race.
Obama had already made one big political blunder when he challenged Bobby Rush for Congress in 2000 without winning the support of the black establishment. It was an error he didn’t repeat, as his alliance with Jones attested. As Jones tell VF’s Todd Purdum:
“After I was elected president, in 2003, he came to see me, a couple months later,” Jones recalled, relishing the tale. “And he said to me, he said, ‘You’re the senate president now, and with that, you have a lot of pow-er.’ ” Jones stretched out the word, as if savoring the pleasure of it, and his voice became very quiet as he continued: “And I told Barack, ‘You think I got a lot of power now?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you got a lot of power.’ And I said, ‘What kind of power do I have?’ He said, ‘You have the power to make a United States senator!’ ” Jones let out a soft, smoky laugh. “I said to Barack, I said, ‘That sounds good!’ I said, ‘I haven’t even thought of that.’ I said, ‘Do you have someone in mind you think I could make?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah. Me.’ “
Jones describes a not inconsiderable role in helping Obama best a field that included millionaire commodities trader Blair Hull and State Comptroller Dan Hynes, an Irish political royal from Chicago’s North Side.
Jones’ support “had the effect of tying the hands of Mayor Richard Daley and Governor Rod Blogojevich. “He knew if he had me in the run for the Senate, it would put a block on the current mayor,” Jones recalled. “The current mayor and the father of the controller, which was Dan Hynes, they were roommates in Springfield when the mayor was a state senator, so they had a relationship. Another big financial backer for the governor was Blair Hull. Barack knew if he had me it would checkmate the governor, ’cause the governor couldn’t come out and go with Blair Hull, ’cause the governor needs me. Same with the mayor. So he had analyzed and figured all of that out. He knew I could help him with labor support. And I could put a checkmate on some of the local politicians that didn’t know him, but they couldn’t really go against me. It was just like in a football game: you got this talented running back, but without those linemen opening the holes and blocking, the running back would never get out of the backfield.”
The profile also explores how various Obama family members, in particular his mother, father and grandmother in very different ways helped shape his ambitions.