Rahm Emanuel

Mayor of Chicago

• Born: November 29, 1959
• Place of Birth: Chicago, Illinois

As a political fund raiser, a member of the Clinton administration, and a US congressman, Emanuel has shaped Democratic politics. As President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Emanuel played an important role in policy making at the national level. Serving as Chicago's newest mayor in a number of years, he has remained committed to cleaning up one of the United States' most troubled cities.

Early Life

Rahm Emanuel was born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 29, 1959. His parents, Benjamin and Martha, raised Emanuel in a Conservative Jewish home. Emanuel is the second of three boys and has an adopted sister.

The Emanuel family had close ties to Israel and political activism. Benjamin, a pediatrician, was born there, had been active in the pre-Israel underground, and belonged to Irgun, a Zionist organization that fought for the establishment of the state of Israel (and later gave rise to the conservative Likud party). Emanuel’s mother was an X-ray technician and an activist in the Civil Rights movement. Emanuel accompanied her on a march organized by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Cicero, Illinois. Young Emanuel often visited Israel to attend summer youth camps, and later he became a civilian volunteer in the Israeli Defense Forces during the first Gulf War in 1991.

Emanuel attended the Conservative Jewish Anshe Emet Day School. After his family moved to Wilmette, a middle-class suburb of Chicago, he went to the New Trier High School, where he displayed so much skill in dance he was offered a scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet School. He declined, and instead he attended Sarah Lawrence College, where he graduated in 1981. During his college years, he became active in Ralph Nader’s consumer rights organization, Common Cause, and worked on a congressional campaign. Emanuel furthered his education at Northwestern University, where he earned a master’s degree in speech and communication in 1985.

While working on his master’s degree, Emanuel became involved in politics professionally when he was hired as a spokesperson for the Illinois Public Action Council, an organization affiliated with Nader. In 1982, Emanuel’s work brought him into contact with David Axelrod, then a reporter and later a member of President Barack Obama’s inner circle of advisers. The two became friends in 1984, when Emanuel worked as a fund raiser for Paul Simon’s successful US Senate campaign, which Axelrod managed. During this period, Emanuel married Amy Rule, a Wharton graduate with a master’s degree in business administration. The couple had three children.

His fund-raising skills on the Simon campaign gained Emanuel notoriety in Democratic Party circles. By 1988, Emanuel was a senior staff member of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), a committee in the House of Representatives that works to support Democratic candidates and helped Richard M. Daley raise money for his mayoral campaigns in 1989 and 1991.

Life’s Work

Emanuel’s record led to an offer to become chief fund raiser for Bill Clinton’s victorious 1992 presidential campaign, moving Emanuel to the national political stage for the first time. He was appointed political director for the new administration. He was removed in 1993 and given the position of deputy communications director and senior adviser to the president for policy and strategy. Emanuel’s biggest challenge came when he was selected to help lead the effort to pass health care reform, an effort that eventually failed. As the Clinton presidency came to an end, Emanuel decided to return to Chicago, and he began working in investment banking, a lucrative career that netted him eighteen million dollars and the financial security he believed he needed to return to politics.

In 2002, Emanuel ran for a seat in the House of Representatives from the Fifth Congressional District of Illinois when Rod Blagojevich declined to run for reelection. After a difficult primary fight, Emanuel easily defeated his Republican opponent, Mark Augusti, and was sworn into office at the beginning of 2003. Emanuel quickly gained the respect of his Democratic colleagues for his efforts at fund-raising and recruiting of new candidates. He also served on the House Financial Services Committee and was a vocal supporter of the Iraq War.

In 2006, Emanuel’s reputation for hard work, aggressiveness, and political success led to his being appointed chair of the DCCC. His fund-raising and campaigning efforts that year helped propel the Democrats to gain thirty seats in the House during the 2006 midterm elections, giving them control over the House for the first time in twelve years. As a reward, Emanuel was elected chair of the Democratic Caucus and seemed on track to become speaker of the House. He was easily reelected to his House seat in 2008.

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency that year changed those plans. President-elect Obama persuaded Emanuel to leave the House of Representatives and to become the new administration’s chief of staff, controlling who gains access to the president. The appointment meant that the president would have an experienced Washington insider within his West Wing, who knew how to work with Congress. Emanuel’s approach to lawmaking was characterized as pragmatic, which means he sought proposals that had enough support to achieve passage rather than pursuing ideological goals that lacked the votes needed for success.

Emanuel’s appointment was not without controversy, however, especially from those groups concerned about his strong support for Israel. However, others argued that Emanuel’s presence kept the Israeli government from failing to engage in the Middle East peace process meaningfully.

Emanuel was perceived as a powerful chief of staff; he had twice-daily private meetings with the president, who sometimes, but not always, followed Emanuel’s advice. For example, Emanuel privately argued against aggressively pursuing health care reform so early in the administration, but Obama insisted on moving forward; once the decision was made, however, Emanuel fully supported the administration’s position, working diligently to achieve success. Emanuel’s efforts on behalf of the administration led him to lobby members of Congress for support and to have influence over major policy decisions. In October 2010, Emanuel resigned from his White House position to run for the mayor of Chicago.

After announcing his candidacy, Emanuel's right to be considered for the mayoral position was legally challenged. The debate centered upon the fact that he had spent a great amount of time living in Washington, DC, during his time as Obama's chief of staff, arguably negating the necessary residence status in Chicago. However, in January 2011, the Illinois Supreme Court unanimously ruled that he could continue with his bid. Emanuel achieved a clear victory over his five opponents and was sworn in as the new mayor of one of the United States' largest cities in May 2011. By the end of 2014, he was beginning efforts toward his reelection bid for the 2015 mayoral election.

In February 2015, Emanuel beat five candidates to come out on top in the general election; however, he had not received a majority of the vote. Therefore, he was forced to compete heavily in the city's first runoff in several years. By April, Emanuel had managed to overcome his fierce competitor, Cook County commissioner Jesus Garcia, with 56 percent of the vote. Only months later, though, the media was reporting a growing disillusionment and frustration with Emanuel's time in office. Still smarting from his decision to close fifty public schools in 2013, many Chicagoans were especially angered and became distrustful of their mayor when, in late 2015, a video ordered to be released by a judge showed a white police officer shooting an African American teenager sixteen times as he was walking away in 2014; the officer was not charged with murder until that time and more than a year had passed since the incident. Protestors began to gather outside of Emanuel's home and stage walkouts to demand that he resign from his position—despite a public apology from the mayor. In early December 2015, state representative La Shawn Ford proposed a bill that would allow voters to have the power to recall the mayor of Chicago; at the time, the right to remove an individual from public office in the state of Illinois was reserved for the governor.

In 2018, Emanuel announced that he would decline to run for a third term as mayor, despite leading in the polls. That same year, Emanuel received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from NUI Galway. In 2021, Emanuel was nominated and confirmed as a United States ambassador to Japan.

Significance

Emanuel redefined the office of chief of staff, making it one of the most powerful positions in the White House. As a result, his influence within the Democratic Party, Congress, and the Executive Branch was far reaching. His efforts to shape public policy were reflected in economic stimulus legislation, health care reform, and even foreign policy. Few chiefs of staff have wielded so much power, and Emanuel’s reputation for energy and toughness made him a formidable member of the Obama administration. Furthermore, his success as chair of the DCCC has remained a blueprint for winning elections and fund-raising for both political parties. Upon his appointment as mayor of Chicago, replacing the longest-serving mayor in the city's history, he vowed to fight the notoriously rampant crime plaguing the city in addition to tackling a number of other significant issues, including the budget and education. However, by 2015, his reputation as mayor had suffered due to nationally criticized mismanagement of significant issues in the city.

Bibliography

Alter, Jonathan. "Meet the New Boss." Atlantic. Atlantic Monthly, 27 Feb. 2012. Web. 2 Jan. 2015.

Bellware, Kim, and Joseph Erbentraut. "Rahm Emanuel Survives Runoff Election and Wins Second Term as Chicago Mayor." Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 7 Apr. 2015. Web. 5 Jan. 2016.

Bendavid, Naftali. The Thumpin’: How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Finally Ended the Republican Revolution. New York: Knopf, 2007. Print.

Davey, Monica. "Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel Will Not Seek Re-election." The New York Times, 4 Sept. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/us/rahm-emanuel-chicago-mayor.html. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Emanuel, Rahm, and Bruce Reed. The Plan. New York: PublicAffairs, 2006. Print.

Lydersen, Kari. Mayor 1%: Rahm Emanuel and the Rise of Chicago's 99%. Chicago: Haymarket, 2013. Print.

Perlstein, Rick. "The Sudden But Well-Deserved Fall of Rahm Emanuel." New Yorker. Condé Nast, 31 Dec. 2015. Web. 5 Jan. 2016.

"Rahm Emanuel Confirmed by U.S. Senate as Next U.S. Ambassador to Japan." U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Japan, 22 Dec. 2021, jp.usembassy.gov/rahm-emanuel-confirmed-as-ambassador-designate-to-japan/. Accessed 3 Sept. 2024.

Schlesinger, Robert. “Rahm Emanuel’s Vision: Democrats Aim for a House Majority in 2006.” Campaigns and Elections 26.5 (2005): 17–20. Print.

Smalley, Suzanne, and Evan Thomas. “Come, O Come, Emanuel.” Newsweek 115.15 (2008): 32. Print.

Steinberg, Neil. "And Now for the Further Adventures of Rahm the Impaler." Esquire. Hearst Communications, 19 Feb. 2014. Web. 2 Jan. 2015.