There was a seemingly innocuous piece on Politico the other day. I saw it, and kept going, but my mind kept wandering back to it. It was titled, “Obama moves DNC operations to Chicago.”

In a major shakeup at the Democratic National Committee — and a departure from tradition — large parts of the committee’s operations are relocating to Chicago to be fully integrated with the Obama campaign.

The DNC’s political department, housed in Washington, D.C., will be dramatically rebuilt, with staffers offered a choice of moving to Chicago, joining state operations, or staying in Washington, DNC spokeswoman Karen Finney said.

But the power will clearly be shifting to a centralized Chicago hub.

The DNC’s key role in coordinating political operations with state parties is expected to largely be taken over and overseen by Obama’s senior staff in Chicago, state party officials said.

I realize that the nominee, as the head of the party, gets to call the shots at the DNC. And the inside baseball angle of staffers being ticked off at losing their jobs is news in and of itself. But the breadth, depth, and wholesale nature of the takeover of the party apparatus seems extreme. DNC staffers who don’t move to Chicago are gone. Those that make the move will answer directly to Obama’s hand picked generals. No discussion. No dissension. Read the rest of this entry »

In 2000, a young 20-something reporter, Todd Spivak was assigned to cover local Chicago politics. Obama was just a rank-and-file state senator in Illinois.

It was 2000 and I was a young, hungry reporter at the Hyde Park Herald and Lakefront Outlook community newspapers earning $19,000 a year covering politics and crime.

I talked with Obama on a regular basis — a couple times a month, at least. I’d ask him about his campaign-finance reports, legislation he was sponsoring and various local issues. He wrote an occasional column published in our papers. It ran with a headshot that made him look about 14 years old.

These days when Obama is asked on the campaign trail about his legislative accomplishments, he often rattles off several bills he sponsored while in the Illinois state senate. Spivak knows a little about Obama’s career in Illionois and there is a lot less to it than meets the eye. Read the rest of this entry »