Axelrod is the founder of AKP&D Message and Media, was a political writer for the Chicago Tribune, and operated ASK Public Strategies, now called ASGK Public Strategies.
Axelrod grew up in Stuyvesant Town on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, in a middle class Jewish-American household. He attended Public School 40. Axelrod's father was a psychologist and avid baseball fan. His mother worked as a journalist at PM, a left-wing 1940s newspaper. Axelrod's parents separated when he was eight years old. Axelrod traces his political involvement back to his childhood. Describing the appeal of politics, he told the Los Angeles Times, "I got into politics because I believe in idealism. Just to be a part of this effort that seems to be rekindling the kind of idealism that I knew when I was a kid, it's a great thing to do. So I find myself getting very emotional about it. At thirteen years old, he was selling campaign buttons for Robert F. Kennedy. After graduating from New York's Stuyvesant High School in 1972, Axelrod attended the University of Chicago. He majored in political science. As an undergraduate, Axelrod wrote for the Hyde Park Herald, covering politics, and picked up an internship at the Chicago Tribune. He lost his father to suicide about the time of his graduation from college in 1977.
Axelrod's ties with Obama reach back more than a decade. Axelrod met Obama in 1992 when Obama so impressed Betty Lou Saltzmann, a woman from Chicago's "lakefront liberal crowd," during a black voter registration drive he ran that she then introduced the two. Obama also consulted Axelrod before he delivered his famed 2002 anti-war speech and asked him to read drafts of his book, The Audacity of Hope.
Axelrod served as the chief strategist and media advisor for Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Axelrod contemplated taking a break from the 2008 presidential campaign, as five of the candidates —Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Edwards, Christopher Dodd, and Tom Vilsack — were past clients. Personal ties between Axelrod and Hillary Clinton also made it difficult, as she had done significant work on behalf of epilepsy causes for a foundation co-founded by Axelrod's wife and mother, Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE) (Axelrod's daughter suffers from developmental disabilities associated with chronic epileptic seizures.) Axelrod's wife even said that a 1999 conference Clinton convened to find a cure for the condition was "one of the most important things anyone has done for epilepsy.
Axelrod ultimately decided to participate in the Obama campaign. He told The Washington Post, "I thought that if I could help Barack Obama get to Washington, then I would have accomplished something great in my life.
Axelrod contributed to the initial announcement of Obama's campaign by creating a five-minute Internet video released January 16, 2007. He continued to use 'man on the street' style biographical videos to create intimacy and authenticity in the political ads.
Axelrod talking to reporters in the "spin room" after the Cleveland Democratic debate in February 2008
While the Clinton campaign chose an incumbent strategy that emphasized experience, Axelrod helped to craft the Obama campaign's main theme of "change." Axelrod criticized the Clinton campaign's positioning by saying that "being the consummate Washington insider is not where you want to be in a year when people want change...[Clinton's] initial strategic positioning was wrong and kind of played into our hands. The change message played a factor in Obama's victory in the Iowa caucuses. "Just over half of Iowa's Democratic caucus-goers said change was the No. 1 factor they were looking for in a candidate, and 51 percent of those voters chose Barack Obama," said CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider. "That compares to only 19 percent of 'change' caucus-goers who preferred Clinton. Axelrod also believed that the Clinton campaign underestimated the importance of the caucus states. "For all the talent and the money they had over there," says Axelrod, "they — bewilderingly — seemed to have little understanding for the caucuses and how important they would become. In the 2008 primary season, Obama won a majority of the states that use the caucus format.
On November 20, 2008, Obama named Axelrod as a Senior Advisor to his administration. His role includes crafting policy and communicating the President's message in coordination with President Obama, the Obama Administration, speechwriters, and the White House communications team.
On April 15, 2009, Jim Messina and Jon Selib, chief of staff to Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, convened a meeting at the headquarters of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) with leaders of organized labor and health care groups, including PhRMA. At the meeting, the groups decided to form two nonprofit entities to promote reform efforts, Healthy Economy Now and Americans for Stable Quality Care, that would be almost entirely funded by PhRMA. The two groups spent $24 million on their advertising campaigns; the contract to produce and place ads went to White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod's former firm, AKPD, which owed Axelrod $2 million.
David Axelrod left his White House senior advisor post on January 28, 2011. He is expected to be a top aide to Obama's 2012 re-election campaign.
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