HIGH-POWERED HIRE
It had stopped raining. The sun had just come out. And former U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp was on the phone. Heidi who? Here’s who.
A Dem femme powerbroker and regular on ABC and CNBC news shows dispensing heartland common sense, Heitkamp was the first woman elected a U.S. senator from North Dakota before getting Trumped out of office.
Fast forward: Heitkamp, an attorney specializing in environmental law, is now being handed the reins of the University of Chicago’s prestigious Institute of Politics — the brainchild of renowned political strategist David Axelrod, who created a new campus student forum merging politics and public service.
“Heidi’s devoted her life to public service,” Axelrod said. “She’s brilliant and grounded and willing to challenge her own points of view.
“And I love that she comes from the heartland and brings those values: honest, open and big-hearted.”
“This country needs diversity in political thought plus the ability to meld policy and politics and public service and the ability to compromise,” Heitkamp said. “That’s why it’s important to build on what David has begun.”
Known as “North Dakota nice” for her ability to negotiate opposing political issues, Heitkamp, who is Catholic, voted against Trump’s conservative choice of Brett Kavanaugh, also a Catholic, for the U.S. Supreme Court — but voted against her party by backing the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry millions of gallons of crude oil from Canada, via North Dakota, to Gulf Oil refineries.
“I met David when I interviewed him to be a consultant in my race for North Dakota governor in 2000,” she said.
“Maybe things would have turned out differently if I had hired him,” she said with a laugh.
Heitkamp, who grew up in a tiny North Dakota town of just 90 people where “my family was one-tenth the population,” will now make a city of millions her parttime home.
One thing to make clear: Heitkamp’s name isn’t really Heidi.
“It’s actually Mary Katherine,” she said. “Practically every kid in North Dakota has a nickname. And there were a lot of Kathys when I was growing up. So my best friend, also named Kathy, decided to nickname me Heidi ... and it stuck.”
This columnist has a special reason to welcome Heitkamp to Chicago. There is only one town in the entire world named Mandan. It’s where Heitkamp lives — and where I was born.
Sitting astride the Missouri River, Mandan was named after the tribe that sheltered explorers Lewis and Clark on the first winter leg of their Voyage of Discovery.
It’s also where each of us had the great good fortune to savor spectacular milkshakes at the ice cream counter of pharmacist Rusty Kruger’s Mandan drugstore, which also dispensed chocolate Buffalo chips.
Mandan touts itself as being “Where the West Begins.”
Welcome, Heidi, to the city of the Big Shoulders.
Ah, the drama of it all!
There were flutters and utters of approval around his table when word began circulating retiring Ald. Tom Tunney was indeed going to run for mayor.
“Thank you, thank you,” Tunney told well-wishers galloping toward his table at the 2022 Chicago Public Library Awards dinner co-hosted by library stellar Amy Eshleman, who is married to Mayor Lori
Lightfoot.
“His nominating petitions are being circulated,” crooned a Tunney fan.
“Wonderful, wonderful,” said another gushing supporter.
Though Tunney’s mayoral nominating petitions were spotted being circulated late last month by his supporters, Tunney, the third member of Lightfoot’s leadership team to break ranks with her, has said he’s still making up his mind.
“I ask myself: Why would I want to give up this life I have now?” Tunney said Wednesday night.
“So, Tom,” inquired Sneed, “are you really running?”
“Well, things … are ... moving … along ... quite well,” said a surprised Tunney, who seemed to be in the midst of a tongue rollback while acting as if he already had won the campaign.
Sneedless to say, it sure sounded like a “yes” was afoot … but safely uttered far enough away from the library dinner podium where Lightfoot was set to appear.
And so it goes in the land of bob and weave.
A pigskin pass …
Toss ’em: A “Save America” campaign fundraiser starring a personally autographed football helmet by “President Donald J. Trump” just landed in my “bot” in-box!
Naturally, it claims the first official “Trump” helmet is priceless.
Will this nonsense ever end?
Sneedlings ...
Edit & credit: Congrats to my colleague Neil Steinberg, whose new book “Every Goddamn Day” was published Wednesday, the same day its publisher, the University of Chicago Press, went into a second printing … Among the Chicago authors noted at the Chicago Public Library bash was former Chicago Tribune reporter John Gorman (also a former Cook County state’s attorney’s office communications director) on his new Chicago detective Mike Halloran novel “Death Before Life.” ... Sunday birthday: former SunTimesman Kevin Hellyer, 71 . ... And a belated birthday to my dear friend Carol Marin, ageless as well as priceless.