Political Analysis: Dynamics of the Obama Campaign’s Historic Achievement

Particularly interesting about Valerie Jarrett’s public policy career since its debut in the late 1970s-and early-1980s Harold Washington Chicago Mayoralty, has been a persistent intertwining of Jarrett’s policy function with African-American realities. As the Wall Street Journal (May 12, 2008) reports: “…Most Recently, as a board member of the committee to bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to Chicago, she has forged cooperation between corporate leaders and the African-American community on the South Side, where most of the sporting and residential venues could be built.”

In 1995 following the publication of Senator Obama’s autobiography Dreams From My Father, Jarrett gave up some 20-odd years working in the public policy arena to work for Habitat Co., a major real-estate developer in Chicago of which she became CEO. The connections she developed at the top ranks of the Chicago business community proved crucial to Jarrett when she embarked upon her first major political role. That role was serving as chair of the finance committee of Barack Obama’s victorious campaign for the U.S. Senate in 2004. But this was not Jarrett’s first interaction with Obama. That occurred in 1991, an event related vividly in the Wall Street Journal (May 12, 2008):

In 1991, Ms Jarrett….head of Chicago’s sprawling 250-person planning and development department…wanted to hire a young Harvard Law School graduate from the South Side who was working in a private Chicago law practice. But the prospect, Michelle Robinson, said she first wanted her potential boss to meet her fiance, a savvy young lawyer named Barack Obama. The trio met at a restaurant for dinner. Ms. Jarrett—older than both by a few years and much more established—was grilled for two hours about Mayor Richard M. Daley’s administration and who would be looking out for Michelle.

At the end of the conversation, she asked Mr. Obama ‘if she had passed the test.’ He smiled and said she had. Mrs. Obama worked for Ms. Jarrett for two years, and the trio trio became fast friends.