Obama Asked Jarrett to Drop Bid for Senate Seat, Axelrod Says

By Julianna Goldman

Dec. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Valerie Jarrett withdrew from consideration to fill Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat after the president-elect told her he preferred that she serve in the White House, a senior Obama adviser said.

“Valerie Jarrett is a long-time friend, adviser, very able person,” David Axelrod, who was chief strategist for Obama’s presidential bid, said at a forum on the 2008 campaign sponsored yesterday by Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

“His preference was always that she serve in the White House, and ultimately he expressed that to her and said look, ‘I just need you,’ and that’s why she made that decision,” Axelrod said.

The Chicago Tribune identified Jarrett as “Senate Candidate 1” mentioned in the 76-page federal criminal complaint against Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich that charged him with attempting to gain financial benefit from his authority to appoint Obama’s replacement in the U.S. Senate.

Jarrett withdrew her name from contention within days after a Nov. 10 conference call where Blagojevich discussed with an aide the appointment of “Senate Candidate 1” in exchange for his wife getting a corporate board appointment. The complaint didn’t suggest any wrongdoing on the part of Obama or Jarrett, and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald said this week there are “no allegations” that Obama knew of the alleged scheme.

On Nov. 15, Obama announced Jarrett would be named as a senior White House adviser in charge of intergovernmental relations and public liaison.

‘Wildest Imagination’

“No one in their wildest imagination could have imagined the scenario that ensued,” Axelrod said. “There’s a vacancy, the governor, apparently, in the complaint of the government had some ideas about what to do with it. We were not involved in that discussion or any discussion of that nature.”

Axelrod was joined at the Harvard event by David Plouffe, Obama’s campaign manager, as well as Rick Davis, Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s campaign manager, and Bill McInturff, the Arizona senator’s pollster. They discussed the highs and lows of the campaign at an hour-long forum titled “War Stories: Inside Campaign 2008,” moderated by Gwen Ifill of PBS.

McCain, his advisers said, faced an uphill battle to win the presidency largely because of the war in Iraq. McCain supported President George W. Bush’s 2007 troop surge in Iraq after initially opposing the president’s handling of the war.

“John McCain essentially became the Bush spokesperson and the administration spokesperson on Iraq,” McInturff said. “In typical John McCain fashion we had managed to alienate every side of our political party.”

‘Bad to Worse’

The emergence of the economy as the dominant issue for voters made things go from “bad to worse for us,” Davis said. “Because there’s only one other thing I think that the American public held the Bush administration responsible for aside from Iraq, that they disliked so much, and that was the worst economy in a lifetime.”

McCain’s advisers also defended the pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, though Davis conceded that one lesson learned from the campaign is that Republicans need to “work on our bench” by bringing in more governors and members of Congress.

Still, Palin has “substantial strengths,” including the highest favorable ratings within the party of any potential Republican presidential candidate for 2012, McInturff said.

“We need to recognize that Governor Palin has ended this campaign with a substantial political following in this party that will make her a player over the next four to eight years,” he said.

Field Operation

Both sides agreed that Obama’s field operation played a major role in his success. Plouffe said the campaign focused on 15 to 16 states to come up with multiple avenues to securing the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win.

In an example of how Obama’s ground organization surpassed McCain’s, McInturff said that in early April he briefed the Republican’s field staff assembled from across the country, totaling 61 people. That compared, he said, to Obama, who had 1,000 paid field organizers across the country.

“I said there must be a closed-circuit TV for the other 944 people, right,” McInturff said, laughing.

McCain’s advisers ceded defeat to Obama’s historic operation, saying that even had the campaign gone on longer, they still would have come up short.

“We lost, and had we gone on three weeks longer, seven weeks longer, they did a terrific job,” McInturff said. “I don’t think there’s anyone in our campaign who said, ‘oh my gosh we’re just a few days short.’”

“I think we’re happy it was over,” he said.

Added Davis, referring to the day Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. filed for bankruptcy and McCain said the fundamentals of the economy were strong:

“Around the 15th of September, it would have been fine to just call it quits at that point,” he said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Julianna Goldman in Boston at jgoldman6@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 12, 2008 00:20 EST

		Email this article Printer friendly format