38 Facts About David Axelrod

David M Axelrod was born on February 22,1955 and is an American political consultant, analyst, and former White House official.

David Axelrod is best known for being the chief strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns.

David Axelrod left the position in early 2011 and became the Senior Strategist for Obama's successful re-election campaign in 2012.

David Axelrod wrote for the Chicago Tribune, and joined CNN as Senior Political Commentator in 2015.

Until recently, David Axelrod served as the director of the non-partisan University of Chicago Institute of Politics.

David Axelrod's memoir is titled Believer: My Forty Years in Politics.

David Axelrod was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City, and grew up in its Stuyvesant Town area.

David Axelrod was raised in a liberal Jewish family and had his bar mitzvah ceremony at the Brotherhood Synagogue in Manhattan.

David Axelrod's father, Joseph Axelrod, was a psychologist and avid baseball fan, who emigrated from Eastern Europe to the United States at the age of eleven.

In 2021, David Axelrod disclosed in a CNN op-ed that his father suffered from severe clinical depression, unbeknownst at the time to the family, which led to his suicide when the younger David Axelrod was 19.

David Axelrod described his childhood as "very turbulent", although he did not specify the exact details that elicited this characterization.

David Axelrod lost his father to suicide in 1977, around the time of his college graduation.

David Axelrod was diagnosed with epilepsy at seven months of age.

David Axelrod describes Lauren as having had brutal seizures, requiring a constantly changing regimen of medications for some time.

David Axelrod worked there for eight years, covering national, state and local politics, becoming their youngest political writer in 1981.

David Axelrod left the Tribune and joined the campaign of US Senator Paul Simon as communications director in 1984.

In January 1990, David Axelrod was hired to be the media consultant for the all but official re-election campaign of Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt.

David Axelrod was retained by the Liberal Party of Ontario to help Dalton McGuinty and his party in 2002 to be elected into government in the October 2003 election.

David Axelrod lost responsibility for making ads, but continued as the campaign's spokesman.

David Axelrod worked as a consultant for Exelon, an Illinois-area utility which operated the largest fleet of nuclear reactors in the United States.

Also in 2006, David Axelrod served as the chief political adviser for Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chair US Representative Rahm Emanuel for the US House of Representatives elections, in which the Democrats gained 31 seats.

David Axelrod was an adjunct professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University, where, along with Professor Peter Miller, he taught an undergraduate class titled Campaign Strategy, analyzing political campaigns, and their strategies.

David Axelrod first met Obama in 1992, when Bettylu Saltzman, a Chicago Democrat, introduced the two of them after Obama had impressed her at a black voter registration drive that he ran.

David Axelrod contributed to the start of Obama's campaign by creating a five-minute Internet video released January 16,2007.

David Axelrod continued to use "man on the street"-style biographical videos to create a sense of intimacy and authenticity in the political ads.

David Axelrod is credited with implementing a strategy that encourages the participation of people, a lesson drawn partly from Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign as well as a personal goal of Barack Obama.

David Axelrod explained to Rolling Stone, "When we started this race, Barack told us that he wanted the campaign to be a vehicle for involving people and giving them a stake in the kind of organizing he believed in".

David Axelrod's role included crafting policy and communicating the President's message in coordination with President Obama, the Obama Administration, speechwriters, and the White House communications team.

David Axelrod left his White House senior advisor post on January 28,2011.

David Axelrod was a top aide to Obama's 2012 re-election campaign.

David Axelrod stated that his job as Obama's chief campaign strategist in the 2012 campaign would be his final job as a political operative.

In January 2013, David Axelrod established a bipartisan Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, where he serves as director.

On January 23,2013, La Stampa reported that David Axelrod was helping Italian prime minister Mario Monti with his election campaign and had flown to Italy to meet with Monti ten days earlier.

On February 19,2013, David Axelrod joined NBC News and MSNBC as a senior political analyst, a position he held until September 2015 when he moved to CNN.

In 2014 David Axelrod was appointed senior strategic adviser to the British Labour Party to assist party leader Ed Miliband in the run-up to the 2015 general election.

David Axelrod is the co-founder of AKPD Message and Media, along with Eric Sedler, and operated ASK Public Strategies, now called ASGK Public Strategies, which were sold in 2009.

In 2015, David Axelrod began hosting a podcast titled The Axe Files a series of in-depth discussions and interviews with various political figures.

David Axelrod joined CNN as a senior political commentator in September 2015.