AXELROD: NO ROLE IN FIRM’S DEALS
David Axelrod — the top campaign adviser to President Barack Obama — sold his ownership stake in ASGK Public Strategies in 2009, when he became a senior White House adviser.
But Axelrod didn’t cut his ties to the Chicago public relations firm completely. He still has an office there. His name is on the door. His old partners are still paying him the five annual $200,000 payments they agreed to when they bought him out.
Now, two of the firm’s clients — Citibank and the Chicago Cubs — have a lot riding on decisions to be made by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the Axelrod friend and former White House colleague who ran on a pledge to reform a City Hall he described as riddled with influence-peddling.
Axelrod says he had no role in landing those contracts and isn’t involved in the work ASGK is doing for Citibank, which wants to help finance Emanuel’s highly touted Chicago Infrastructure Trust, or for the Cubs, who want Emanuel’s help in financing a major renovation of Wrigley Field.
Axelrod says he didn’t even know Citibank was an ASGK client until a reporter told him.
“I knew they represent the Cubs — I’m a huge fan,” says Axelrod, who’s back in Chicago from Washington to guide the president’s reelection campaign, which is based here. “But I have not been involved in the [Wrigley] project and don’t know the details of it.”
Axelrod says the terms of his deal with ASGK “are fixed and unaffected by these deals” with Citibank and the Cubs.
Emanuel’s top spokeswoman says hiring ASGK won’t win Citibank and the Cubs any favors from City Hall.
“If you think hiring Axelrod’s old firm will get you special access or privileges, you are sorely mistaken,” says spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton. “No person or company has an inside track into City Hall.”
Still, the public is rightly skeptical when companies with insider connections are involved with government, especially when the stakes are high, says David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
Yepsen says the Cubs and any firm that wants a part of the potentially lucrative Infrastructure Trust should