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After graduating from New York's Stuyvesant High School and from the University of Chicago, where he studied political science, Axelrod worked for the Chicago Tribune for eight years beginning in 1977, and rose from intern to City Hall bureau chief. He left in 1984 to work for Paul Simon during the Illinois congressman's successful run for U.S. Senate. He founded a political consultancy, which served the likes of Chicago mayors Harold Washington and Richard M. Daley, and senators John Edwards and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Saw Potential in Obama

Obama and Axelrod met through a mutual friend in Chicago while Obama, just out of Harvard Law School, was conducting a voter registration drive in 1993. Obama's run for the Senate in 2004---he was a state senator at the time---intrigued the consultant. "There was not an African-American in the U.S. Senate, and there were very few people of his caliber. He was not a front-runner at that point. He was quite the underdog. But I told him I wanted to work with him," Axelrod told the Los Angeles Times. Obama won the primary and the election, and in between generated headlines as the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention.

Axelrod, who helped assemble Obama's election team, oversees the campaign's advertising and coordinates activities with polling experts. He is at Obama's side frequently during campaign trips, and meets frequently with reporters. "Axelrod is described as Obama's answer to Karl Rove and the most powerful political consultant not on a coast," Maria L. La Ganga wrote in the Los Angeles Times. Rove, a political consultant credited with getting many Republicans elected, rose to deputy chief of staff in the George W. Bush administration.

'Slumming in the Wards'

"Axelrod has the political operative's BlackBerried, wearied demeanor, at once somewhat more and somewhat less than fully awake. His conversations are staccato, 90-second affairs, affirmations, and advice," wrote Wallace-Wells, who added that Axelrod "is lumbering, sardonic, and self-deprecating, and he still has the old, Chicago street-fighter belief that you can see what matters about politics most clearly when you're slumming in the wards."

Most of Axelrod's clients are urban, progressive Democrats. When Obama surged past Clinton and secured the presidential nomination, Axelrod was credited for Obama's message of promising change. "The keeper of that message is David Axelrod," La Ganga wrote.

Axelrod became a target when Republican John McCain surged in the polls after naming Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running mate. Mark Cunningham in the New York Post even suggested that Axelrod is overmatched. "Axelrod specializes in urban politics. He's run a bunch of mayoral races (usually in cities with lots of blacks), plus contests in true-blue states like Massachusetts and New York," Cunningham wrote. "And his favorite guns may well misfire now."

Honored for Epilspsy-Related Work

Axelrod's wife, the former Susan Landau, founded Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy (CURE). David Axelrod serves on its advisory board, and received an award from the organization for fundraising on its behalf. The Axelrods' daughter Lauren, one of three children, lives in a group home after a lifetime of seizures damaged her brain. "That is Axelson's softer side," La Ganga wrote. "In politics, he can have a harder edge."