Thread: The House Rahm Built

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From the Tribune archives: The House Rahm Built

How Chicago's profane, ruthless, savvy operative, remade the Democrats in his image


By Naftali Bendavid Tribune staff reporter
November 12, 2006

Rahm Emanuel was seething.

He was hurtling down an asphalt road in upstate New York on the 47th trip of his ferocious campaign to win back the House. A lecture, even from his friend James Carville, was the last thing he needed.

In just 12 days, Emanuel's quest would end in a historic victory–a triumph that almost no one believed possible when he accepted the challenge nearly two years ago–or in colossal failure.

And here were Carville and pollster Stan Greenberg telling him he had to make each of his handpicked candidates shift from attack mode and strike a conciliatory note in their final campaign ads.

"James. No James, YOU LISTEN," Emanuel barked into a cell phone, about to release a string of profane invectives more intense than usual. "Can you listen for one [expletive] minute? I'm working these campaigns all the time. The campaigns all have different textures."

His wiry body tensed, his voice breaking with stress. Emanuel shouted, "If you don't like what you see, I highly recommend you pick up the … phone and do it yourself."

The moment captured Rahm in full, a portrait in power of a brutally effective taskmaster.

During the past year, the Tribune had exclusive access to the strategy sessions, private fundraisers and other moments that shaped this victory. The newspaper agreed not to print any of the details until after the election. Now that the votes have been counted, the story of how Emanuel helped end an era of Republican rule can be told.

He did it, in large measure, by remaking the Democratic Party in his own image.

Democrats had never raised enough money. Emanuel, a savvy fundraiser who shaped those skills under Richard M. Daley and Bill Clinton, yelled at colleagues and threatened his candidates into generating an unprecedented amount of campaign cash.

Democrats had a history of appeasing party constituencies. Emanuel tore up the old litmus tests on abortion and other issues. With techniques that would make a Big Ten football coach blush, he recruited candidates who could mount tough challenges in some of the reddest patches of America.

Democrats had blanched at hardball. Emanuel, jokingly called "Rahmbo" even by his mother, muscled weaker Democrats out of races in favor of stronger ones, and ridiculed the chairman of his own party.

In January 2005, when Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi asked Emanuel to head the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, experts predicted that the party would take perhaps three seats. On Tuesday, it picked up at least 28, changing the course of the Bush presidency.

In a world where congressmen refer to each other as "my distinguished colleague," Emanuel, 46, is sometimes unable to get through a single sentence without several obscenities. His politics are centrist, but his style is extremist. The top of his right middle finger was severed when he was a teenager, adding to his aura of toughness–especially when he extends that middle finger, which he does with some regularity.

For all his forcefulness, Emanuel was not responsible for the political climate, either the failing war or the sex and corruption scandals racking the Republican Party. But with creative recruiting, unremitting fundraising and a national message, he positioned the Democrats to exploit that collapse.

In doing so, Emanuel had to be familiar with roughly 50 individual races–the candidates, the interest groups, the voting blocs. It resembled a game of three-dimensional chess, in that what happened in one district could affect dozens of others.

From the outset, there could be only one measure of success: the number of seats the Democrats won. Bill Paxon, a former New York congressman who held Emanuel's job for the Republicans when they seized the House in 1994, explained the unforgiving math.

"Unlike a lot of things in government where there is compromise, there is only one result–you either win or you lose–and you are judged on that," Paxon said. "You can look at fundraising, candidate recruitment and other things, but they are meaningless. The only thing that matters is if you win or lose."

This is the story of how Rahm and the Democrats won.

KILLER INSTINCT

The Republicans always had killers on their side, ruthless closers like Karl Rove, Tom DeLay and Lee Atwater, the late mudslinging mastermind credited with getting the first President Bush elected.

In Emanuel, Democrats had their counterpart, a tactician of a caliber the party had not seen since the young Lyndon Johnson converted the DCCC into a power base.

Emanuel's thin, unimposing frame still hints at the teen and college years devoted to ballet; his voice sometimes screeches, and his words can get jumbled in public speeches.

But his political style–honed in Chicago and on the presidential campaign trail with Clinton–isn't gentle or uncertain. His reputation as a political street fighter inspires respect and more than a little fear.

Some Republicans coped by employing humor. Spotting Emanuel in the House gym last July, Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut told him he knew that he'd been targeted. Emanuel was planning to spend $3 million to defeat the popular moderate.

"I'll tell you what," Shays said. "Just give me the $3 million, and I'll retire voluntarily."

Emanuel's strategy was to keep the opposition uncomfortable. If a Republican congressman took a vote that he hoped no one in his district would notice, such as supporting a Bush budget cut, Emanuel immediately issued a press release and sent it to the Republican's hometown newspaper. He then sent it to the lawmaker's office to, as he said, "[mess] with their heads."

He had the DCCC designate one Republican as the "rubber stamp of the week" and another as the "crony of the week," a gimmick that generated a surprising amount of local coverage. Republicans who received money from drugmakers or oil companies were ridiculed as lackeys of special interests.

Last fall, a Democratic takeover of the House was laughable. Emanuel faced a merciless political map. Computer-assisted gerrymandering had made it possible for Republicans to draw congressional boundaries with increasing precision, ensuring a maximum number of GOP-leaning districts.

And yet Emanuel worried the GOP. "I think there is a lot of angst on our side," Rep. Tom Cole, an Oklahoma Republican, said late last year.

The popularity of the war in Iraq already was declining, and the president's poll numbers weren't good. If things got worse, GOP strategists sensed that Emanuel was someone who could take advantage of the opportunity. "If you are in a lead-pipe cinch Republican district, it's easier. But if you are in a marginal district, it's tough," Cole said. "The shark looks beautiful when you are outside the tank. But inside, it's a little different."

One of Emanuel's top targets, Rep. E. Clay Shaw of Florida, was 67, had served in the House for a quarter-century and had no desire to end his career with an embarrassing loss. One day last summer, when Emanuel was walking from his office to the Capitol, he passed Shaw. He nodded, saying "Clay" by way of greeting. Shaw stared ahead icily and kept walking. "See how he didn't say hello?" Emanuel asked.

He knew he was despised. "Look, this is not for the fainthearted," Emanuel said. "Their job is important to them, and I am seen as a threat to their job security. And that's life. And I didn't come here to win a popularity contest with them."

He added, "I wake up some mornings hating me too."

None of Emanuel's relationships with Republicans was testier than the one with Rep. Tom Reynolds, the upstate New Yorker who was his Republican counterpart. A stocky 56-year-old, Reynolds sometimes flinched when Emanuel's name was mentioned. Reynolds tried to be sportsmanlike, even when Emanuel targeted him for defeat–breaking the usual gentlemen's deal not to go after whoever was running the other party's campaign.

"If this was a tennis game, I would say he's a good tennis player and he makes my game better," Reynolds said grudgingly late last year. "He's a good pol. He's from Chicago." Then Reynolds added that he was a good pol too, from New York.

INTENSE, EVEN IN TIGHTS

Central to Emanuel's ability to unnerve his political enemies is his fierce intensity, a quality that wasn't initially apparent as he grew up on the North Shore of Chicago. He played peacemaker between his older brother Ezekiel and his younger brother Ari, and he pirouetted around the house. "Ari would be wrestling, Zeke would be pondering deep thoughts, and Rahmmy would be leaping down the stairs and doing ballet dance twirls," his mother, Marsha, recalled.

Ari even got the top bunk bed when he and Rahm shared a room, even though Rahm was older and could have laid claim to it. "I was physically stronger," Ari Emanuel explained.

But when their parents sent Rahm to study ballet, his single-mindedness emerged. "Intense would be a word I would have used even then," said Kerry Hubata, his former ballet teacher. "I've seen kids with physical talent but didn't work as hard. Others, who weren't as gifted physically but had the desire and didn't mind the pain, succeeded more. He had the drive."

That drive only increased when Emanuel suffered an accident just before his 1977 graduation from New Trier West High School. Working at an Arby's, Emanuel badly cut the middle finger of his right hand. He insisted on going to prom festivities anyway, including a swim in Lake Michigan, and the finger became badly infected. Emanuel, his family recalled, lay near death in Children's Memorial Hospital with a fever of 106 degrees, as antibiotics were pumped into him. In the end, doctors removed half his finger.

"That was a big turning point in Rahm's life," said his mother, sitting in the kitchen of the Emanuels' modest two-story home in Wilmette. "It was touch-and-go, and finally when he came out of it he was more serious. … I honestly think that was his existential moment of near-death and realizing that you have to do something with life."

Emanuel was not the only brother with a drive to succeed. Ezekiel, the eldest, became an oncologist, joined the faculty at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard University, and is now a prominent medical ethicist at the National Institutes of Health. Ari went to Hollywood and has become an enormously wealthy agent, not to mention the inspiration for the bombastic Ari Gold character on HBO's " Entourage." (Emanuel, too, partly inspired a TV character: Josh Lyman on "The West Wing.")

The accomplished brothers came from parents with strong personalities. Emanuel's father, Benjamin, worked for the Jewish underground in pre-state Israel–he was smashed on the head by a British officer's baton, which left a dent in his skull–and became a well-known pediatrician in Chicago. Emanuel's mother was a civil rights activist who sometimes did not come home at night because she had been arrested. The Emanuels also adopted a daughter, Shoshana, who had a difficult youth and has kept a low profile.

Ezekiel Emanuel attributes the congressman's drive to their father. "He was notorious for seeing twice as many patients as the next guy on this list," Ezekiel said. "He would be personable, but just `Get to the meat of things and get it done.'

"That obviously is a trait that people can see in Rahm, and it's quite clear where it came from, in my opinion."

Personable, however, is not a word many would use to describe Benjamin Emanuel's middle son. White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen once said of catcher A.J. Pierzynski: "If you play against him, you hate him. If you play with him, you hate him a little less." Though Emanuel has his die-hard loyalists, he could be the Democratic Party's A.J. Pierzynski.

PARTY CRASHER

On a late-spring day in 2006, Emanuel and Charles Schumer, the New Yorker in charge of winning the Senate for the Democrats, walked into the office of party Chairman Howard Dean.

Emanuel, once again, was ready for a fight.

For months, he and Schumer had been imploring the iconoclastic former presidential candidate to channel more money into congressional campaigns. Dean had been pushing a "50-state strategy" to build a Democratic operation in every part of the country.

The national party usually spent millions to help House candidates, but Dean was instead using the money to build this far-flung operation, to Emanuel's immense frustration. He felt Dean's strategy wasted money in unwinnable places.

According to Emanuel, the meeting devolved into a confrontation over resources. Emanuel said that the Republicans planned to heavily fund key races and that if Dean refused to do the same, it would amount to unilateral disarmament. Dean replied that he was fielding activists in every corner of every state.

Ridiculing the effort, Emanuel told Dean that he had seen no sign of it. "I know your field plan. It doesn't exist," he recalled saying. "I've gone around the country with these races. I've seen your people. There's no plan, Howard."

The tongue-lashing was another example of how Emanuel took a sledgehammer to intraparty niceties, making plenty of enemies along the way.

The gravitational center of Democratic antagonism toward Emanuel was the Congressional Black Caucus. Many of the caucus' 43 members complained that Emanuel had not hired enough African-American staffers. They also protested that when he harangued lawmakers to pay their DCCC dues, he did not recognize how hard it was for black politicians, many of whom represented poorer areas, to raise money. The protests often erupted into shouting matches. "If a person says, ` Danny Davis, where are your dues?' I may have a particular difficulty getting my dues that you don't know about or you don't relate to," Rep. Danny Davis, the West Side Democrat, said last summer. "Rahm don't take no prisoners."

Emanuel was privately contemptuous of such complaints. He saw the Black Caucus as one more party faction, like conservative Democrats, that would rather complain than work. Asked about the number of black staffers at the DCCC–two African-Americans were on his senior staff of about 10 people–he waved his hand dismissively. "You know that every [DCCC] chairman has faced the same criticism?" he said. "OK. So I don't give a [expletive]," he added, literally spitting.

Then he began ranting about his conservative party colleagues. "They hate me too, because I'm arrogant and pushy with them. … Because they've never, ever WORKED! NOBODY! NONE OF 'EM!"

Little enraged Emanuel as much as a fellow Democrat who didn't share his unrelenting drive to win. In January 2006, Rep. Alcee Hastings, a Florida Democrat, was quoted in a local newspaper speaking sympathetically of Republican Clay Shaw. Because of his longtime friendship with Shaw, Hastings pointedly declined to endorse Shaw's Democratic challenger.

Hastings was a colorful figure. A former federal judge, he was removed from the bench by Congress in 1989 for corruption and perjury, only the sixth U.S. judge in history to suffer this fate. He took revenge by winning a seat in Congress. A forceful speaker, Hastings chastised Emanuel in a closed meeting of House Democrats for not recruiting more candidates.

"He's great on lectures," Emanuel said later. "Phenomenal lecturer. I'm getting a lecture on recruitment when A, you haven't done a … damn thing, and B, we've got a [Republican] target and you're out there kissing his [behind] in the press?"

Hastings refused to back down, saying he was close to both Shaw and his Democratic rival, Ron Klein, and could not in good conscience take sides. "Ron Klein is my friend. I have known Clay Shaw for nearly 40 years," he said. "Far be it from me to insert myself in a race of that kind."

Hastings was hardly the only Democrat who Emanuel thought was not pulling his weight. Many of his colleagues were doing great work, he said, but dozens of others declined to help him take on their Republican friends.

"You've got to have a thirst for winning," he said. "You know what our party thinks? `We're good people with good ideas. That's just enough, isn't it?' Being tough enough, mean enough and vicious enough is just not what they want. … They just want to be patted on the back for the noble effort. No."

This no-holds-barred politics came naturally to Emanuel. In the 1980s he joined the campaigns of Sen. Paul Simon and Mayor Daley, proving adept at raising money. (Daley would later return the favor by fielding city patronage workers to help Emanuel win his first congressional election in 2002; that get-out-the-vote operation is now part of a federal investigation.)

Political consultant David Axelrod remembers Emanuel as a young Chicago political operative. "The first word that comes to mind is chutzpah," Axelrod said. "He redefined the term."

Emanuel brought that chutzpah to Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton's improbable presidential run. "He was then a little more brash and less polished than now, but he clearly had loads of ability and drive," the former president recalled in an e-mailed response to questions. "My first impression was, `This guy is going to help us win.' And he did. I doubt we could have done it without him, especially in those critical early months."

When Clinton did win, Emanuel became his White House political director. But this time, his confrontational style failed him, as he clashed with other staffers and was quickly demoted to "director of special projects." The humiliation tempered his sharpest edges.

"He was devastated by what happened," said his mother, Marsha. "He told us that he had to sit back and rethink his methodology. And like with the finger, he took a deep breath and saw what direction he should go in."

Something of the relationship between the undisciplined president and his hard-hitting aide can be gleaned from an inscription on a photo Clinton gave Emanuel on his 38th birthday. Clinton signed it as though he were Emanuel: "Now Mr. President, how many times do I have to tell you, say it this way?" Clinton wrote. "And, by the way, wish me a happy birthday. Always gently, Rahm 11/29/97."

Emanuel's passion and loyalty won him the allegiance of others too. Stan Greenberg's daughter Anna, a friend of Emanuel's as well as his pollster, asked him to officiate at her wedding earlier this year. Emanuel studied hard, read sacred texts and consulted a rabbi.

He could not resist cracking a few political jokes at the ceremony. But the wedding highlighted Emanuel's attachment to Judaism. "It's not as much about going to synagogue," Greenberg said. "But having ritual and tradition and teaching Jewish values are really, really important to him."

It was a side of Emanuel not seen by many people, including many of his fellow Democratic congressmen.

On a warm night last May, Emanuel summoned them to a colorless conference room at Democratic headquarters. He had walked a fine line for a year and a half, hoping to excite Democrats without unduly raising expectations. But now he felt the time had come to convince them that they could actually win.

As several dozen House members settled into hard chairs, Emanuel cited polls suggesting that voters were ready for change. He also showed a video that included a quote from Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio confessing, "These numbers are scary." Images of Tom DeLay and other Republicans felled by scandal flashed on the screen to the pumping rhythm of the Queen song "Another One Bites the Dust."

Demoralized by defeat, many Democrats had begun to think that they would lose no matter how favorable the political winds. Al Gore and John Kerry appeared to have the momentum in their races, only to suffer crushing losses. The GOP had more money, armies of social conservatives and an entire region of the country, the South, almost uniformly in its camp.

But with his mastery of details, Emanuel gradually convinced even his most jaded colleagues that the Democrats could reach more than the 15-seat net gain they needed to seize the House for the first time since 1992.

Emanuel was constantly on the phone to candidates–coaching, reassuring, tormenting. In an August call to candidate Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, Emanuel promised that Bill Clinton would help him raise money. "Joe Sestak, this is your rabbi, Rahm," he intoned playfully. "Clinton. I'm close to having him do an event for you in Philly. … Clinton will put his arm around you and say, `He's my man.'"

In a fairly typical sign-off, he concluded another call to Sestak: "Don't [mess] it up or … I'll kill you. All right, I love you. Bye."

He warned another Pennsylvania hopeful, Chris Carney, about negative ads the GOP was about to unleash. "They're going to come after you," Emanuel said. "You haven't said anything stupid on the hustings, have you?

"Well, don't waste your time with me. Go raise some more money."

A MACHO MAKEOVER

All of Emanuel's scolding and cajoling would have meant nothing if he fielded weak candidates. After yet another devastating loss in 2004, he and other Democratic leaders quickly determined that the party needed a machismo implant. Emanuel looked for candidates with strong backgrounds, from sheriffs to soldiers, to counteract a Democratic image of softness.

This is why he badly wanted Heath Shuler, a former football star, to run for Congress as a Democrat in North Carolina. An evangelical Christian who opposes abortion, Shuler couldn't easily have his views caricatured by the GOP.

But Shuler was worried that if he ran and won, he would never see his two young children. To prove that congressmen do spend time with their children, Emanuel started calling Shuler in early 2005 whenever he was with his own family.

Shuler would pick up the phone and hear, "It's Rahm. I'm at a soccer game with my kids. Just wanted you to know that." Or "It's Rahm. I'm at a kindergarten play now. Talk to you soon." Shuler received perhaps 10 such calls. Of course, this also illustrated that whenever Emanuel was with his family, he was working.

In any case, Shuler agreed to jump in the race, challenging a 16-year incumbent and becoming one of the Democrats' hottest candidates. "I was recruited from high school to play college football, I was recruited by almost every college in the country, and then I was recruited into the NFL," said Shuler, a former Washington Redskins quarterback.

"I know all the angles that people use to recruit you," he added. "Nobody does it as well as Rahm Emanuel."

Emanuel believed in being tough. In September 2005, he described a Vietnam veteran he was trying to recruit this way: "I don't know if he's going to win, but I'll tell you this: I don't want to cross [him]. I think he would take out a knife and kill you. I think he would kill you." Emanuel viewed this as an asset.

His goal was to recruit 50 credible challengers. He had one criterion: people who could win. That may sound obvious, but it's not. Many Democrats did not believe in recruiting overly conservative candidates, no matter how promising. In the past, those like Shuler who opposed abortion were not welcome in the party.

"We don't have an ideological purity test," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, Emanuel's top lieutenant for recruiting. "If you believe in the basic gut principles of the Democratic Party–opportunity, fairness for all–we're not going to hold people to a litmus test."

Emanuel's recruiting effort had its share of failures; his top two candidates to challenge Rep. Richard Pombo, a vulnerable California Republican, turned him down, and his third candidate lost in the primary. (Pombo lost anyway, reflecting the magnitude of the Democratic victory.) Republicans mocked many of his recruits as "B-list."

But in the election's aftermath, it is clear that Democrats won several races, including Shuler's, that they would have lost if not for Emanuel's tireless recruiting. He had put enough legitimate challengers in place to exploit the unexpected opportunity.

Eclipsed by the election night euphoria was the fact that one of Emanuel's few disappointments came in his own back yard. Tammy Duckworth, a captain in the Illinois Army National Guard, lost to state Sen. Peter Roskam despite being one of the Democrats' highest-profile candidates.

Initially recruited by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Duckworth was the only wounded Iraq war veteran running for Congress. And she proved an irresistible news story, as Emanuel knew she would: A brave woman volunteers to serve in Iraq, loses both legs in combat and returns to seek office.

Her candidacy also showed Emanuel's sometimes-callous pragmatism. When Duckworth entered the race, another Democrat, Christine Cegelis, was already running for the same seat. Cegelis had run two years earlier, done surprisingly well and built a loyal following. But Emanuel and Durbin did not believe she was working hard enough or raising sufficient money, and they settled on Duckworth as better-suited to the centrist district.

Between the appeal of her story and the power of her patrons, Duckworth won the backing of nearly every influential institution in Illinois. The state AFL-CIO announced its support for Duckworth – even though Cegelis, not Duckworth, was a former union member.

Emanuel used his connections to get Duckworth an appearance on the Sunday talk show hosted by George Stephanopoulos, his friend and former colleague in the Clinton White House. Another Emanuel ally, Axelrod, became Duckworth's media consultant. Cegelis could not compete with this, losing 44 percent to 40 percent to Duckworth in the March primary, with a third candidate getting the rest.

In the general election campaign, Roskam cast Duckworth as a puppet of Emanuel. "My opponent, in her name-calling, has called me a rubber stamp," Roskam said during one debate. "But I challenge my opponent to come up with one issue on which she differs from Congressman Rahm Emanuel."

Days before the election, Roskam's campaign gave Emanuel and the Duckworth camp a little of their own business. Just as organized labor had supported her in the primary even though Cegelis was the former card-carrying union member, the VFW endorsed Roskam even though Duckworth was the wounded war veteran.

Ultimately the district was too Republican, and Duckworth was too green, to pull off a win.

`DIG DEEP DOWN'

Emanuel walked into the offices of Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye, a top Boston law firm, early one morning last August. The mission: extract as much money as possible from the 20 lawyers chewing bagels around a 30-foot conference table.

"I've been in politics for 20 years. This is the first time I've seen the stars aligned like this," Emanuel told them. "People know the party in power has messed things up."

Despite his phrasemaking, Emanuel was not a great speaker; he could lapse into a confusing shorthand on politics or legislation. But his message on this day was clear. He held up a $12,000 check he had just written to New Hampshire Democratic candidate Jim Craig. "I'm in for 12, folks," Emanuel said. "I want you to dig deep down. … For the first time, this is within our grasp."

Several listeners pulled out checkbooks on the spot, and the event raised $20,000. Someone asked Emanuel how he planned to spend the money he was raising nationally. He would not distribute funds based on which candidates he liked, he said, nor on who were the most loyal Democrats.

"I'm cutthroat about this," he said. "I don't give a crap where I pick up seats. I plan on winning. There is no emotional attachment."

Emanuel had arrived at the DCCC with a reputation as a world-class fundraiser. As finance director for Bill Clinton's first presidential run, Emanuel jumped on a table to exhort his staff to work harder. He yelled at donors, refusing to accept checks he considered too small. He probably saved Clinton's candidacy by keeping the cash flowing even after embarrassing reports of Clinton's affair with Gennifer Flowers.

Democrats always trail Republicans in fundraising, but in his fight for the House, Emanuel was determined to keep the money race close. No matter how good candidates were, it meant little if they did not have cash to advertise and pay campaign workers. Emanuel's first goal, as he traveled the country asking for money, was to raise $95 million. But as the Democrats gained momentum, contributions surged and Emanuel raised his target to $105 million. By the campaign's end, the Democrats had brought in close to $120 million, easily surpassing all previous records.

Emanuel and his staff judged a candidate almost entirely by how much money he or she brought in. If the candidate proved a good fundraiser, the DCCC would provide support, advertising and strategic advice. If not, the committee would shut him or her out.

Emanuel's demands were specific. Democratic challengers, for instance, had to raise $320,000 by March 31. At a staff meeting a year ago, talk turned to a Pennsylvania Democrat named Andy Warren who had raised a meager $38,662 in the previous three months.

Emanuel ordered the staff to drop Warren and back his Democratic opponent. "Eliminate him," Emanuel said curtly.

As for other candidates who had not met their goals, Emanuel said, "We'll just take three hours tomorrow, and I'll call the idiots who need to be pushed."

THE FINAL SPRINT

The story of the 2006 campaign was ultimately that of an overreaching Republican coalition that imploded over sex and corruption scandals as well as Iraq's descent into chaos. With astounding speed, Republicans found themselves out of sync with the voters, falling from grace in nearly unprecedented fashion. Emanuel did not know that would happen any more than anyone else did. His goal at the outset had been simply to win more seats than expected.

The effort exacted a toll on Emanuel, a father of two girls and a boy. After he voted for himself in the Illinois Democratic primary in March, his 8-year-old daughter Ilana had said she hoped he would lose so he would not travel so much. She could imitate Emanuel's conversations with people such as Schumer, New York's senior senator.

" Chuck," she would say. A pause, and then, louder, "CHUCK!" Emanuel's son, Zach, 9, stopped talking to him when he called from the road. When Emanuel was home, Zach implored him to stop talking on his cell phone while they were tossing a football.

Emanuel called his wife, Amy Rule, several times a day from the road. They had met on a blind date in 1990 and married four years later. An MBA from Wharton, Rule worked at the Art Institute of Chicago but is now a stay-at-home mom, raising their children on the North Side.

In the car after an August fundraiser in Boston, Emanuel told her that he hadn't slept much the night before, kept awake by all the details of the campaign.

"How are the kids?" he asked.

After listening to her response, he said wistfully, "I'm so sorry I'm missing two little girls in the bathtub. Sounds peaceful."

His hair turned whiter during the campaign and he lost 14 pounds, his clothes hanging on a scarecrow frame. As Election Day neared, he awoke every morning at 3, agitating and strategizing. By day's end, his fingers would be trembling and his nose running from fatigue.

Most stressful for Emanuel was his lack of control over certain decisions. Campaign finance laws required him to create an "independent expenditures" group to oversee the vast majority of Democratic TV ads. Its independence was limited because it was run by John Lapp, who had spent much of the campaign as Emanuel's top aide. But Emanuel had to dump half the $120 million he had raised into the group's coffers, with no say over how it was spent.

As the campaign drew to a close, Lapp and his deputy, Ali Wade, were signing off on dozens of advertisements each day in an office across the street from the DCCC. The office was filled with chaotic activity–phones ringing, staffers charging in, ads playing on computers. A board on the wall listed districts where the DCCC was airing TV spots. One day in October, another call from James Carville prompted Wade to say in exasperation: "Can we change our number so he doesn't keep calling?"

This was a fast-moving game, especially for Emanuel. He took his 48th and final campaign trip to Las Vegas five days before the election. This visit to Nevada candidate Tessa Hafen was symbolic of how the landscape had shifted; just weeks earlier, her cause was thought to be hopeless, but now she had a chance, albeit a slim one.

Emanuel careened between overwhelming anxiety and giddiness. At a fundraiser for Hafen that night, Emanuel seemed tense. But by the next morning, preparing for his final news conference, he was in an expansive, almost joyful, mood as he gulped two cups of black coffee in the lobby of Las Vegas' monstrous Mandalay Bay hotel and casino.

"We have a seat in New Hampshire we are going to … steal," he chortled.

And in a final spurt of generosity, Emanuel ordered a gift sent to all the Democratic candidates he had been coaching for nearly two years. Back in early 2005, when he was recruiting candidates, Emanuel sent cheesecakes to particularly desirable prospects. So on the eve of the election, 70 cakes went out from Eli's Cheesecake in Chicago to Democratic challengers from Nevada to Connecticut.

BIG NIGHT

A large erasable board, divided into some 80 squares for various House districts, dominated one wall in the DCCC offices on election night. Interns rushed to update results, prompting cheers or moans from the assembled staffers.

When a winner was declared in a race, the interns outlined the square in red marker. As the number of red squares grew, the magnitude of the Democratic gains became clear and an unfamiliar mood of jubilation overtook the staffers.

For Emanuel–ensconced in an office with friends and family–the board represented the culmination of two years' work. Every number reported the fate of a candidate he had helped recruit, cultivate and had come to know.

Televisions were scattered throughout the DCCC offices and common areas. At 11:08, CNN's Wolf Blitzer intoned, "We can now project that the Democrats will be in the majority in the House of Representatives."

Emanuel seemed momentarily dazed, hugging his brother Zeke and kissing Amy. Six minutes later, Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi, looking jittery and happy, walked from the room where she had been watching the returns into Emanuel's office.

He roared, "Fellas–Madame speaker!" Pelosi and Emanuel hugged, rocking gently together for a few seconds. Brian Wolff, a staffer who worked for both Emanuel and Pelosi, called out, "Mission accomplished!"

At that moment, Sen. Barack Obama, who had campaigned relentlessly for House candidates, called to offer congratulations. "Barack," Pelosi said. "Thank you, thank you, thank you for all that you did." She walked back to her office muttering, "I gotta call my brother."

As Pelosi made her way through the DCCC staffers, some applauded, then more joined in and everyone rose in a whooping standing ovation. "This is so much better than losing," a staffer said to no one in particular.

Emanuel walked out of his office into the ecstatic throng and hopped on a desk.

In a few minutes, in front of the cameras, he would strike a conciliatory note about his opponents, and in the days that followed he would stress how both parties needed to work together for what was best for the country.

But at that moment, Emanuel would not, could not censor his glee, or restrain his distaste for the defeated Republicans.

For weeks they had been boasting that their program for turning out voters in the campaign's final 72 hours would swamp all his work. The voters had made those statements look ridiculous.

"I'll tell you this," Emanuel shouted out to his staff. "The Republicans may have the 72-hour program. But they have not seen the 22-month program!

"Since my kids are gone, I can say it: They can go --- themselves!"

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Despite the effort to show his "warm fuzzy" side, I wouldn't trust that conniving little pipsqueak as far as I could throw him.

Sometimes, I think he's the REAL danger and threat behind obama.