Rahm Emanuel
Rahm Emanuel (born November 29, 1959, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.) is an American politician who served as an adviser to U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton (1993–99) before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (2003–09). He later was chief of staff (2009–10) to U.S. Pres. Barack Obama, mayor of Chicago (2011–19), and U.S. ambassador to Japan (2021– ).
His father was a doctor who immigrated to the Chicago area from Israel, and Emanuel was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household. He attended Sarah Lawrence College (B.A., 1981) before earning a master’s degree (1985) in speech and communication at Northwestern University.
In the early 1980s Emanuel launched his political career. He worked for a consumer rights organization before serving on Paul Simon’s successful 1984 U.S. Senate campaign. By 1989 Emanuel had established a reputation as a hard-nosed political operator. That year he was chief fund-raiser for Richard M. Daley’s mayoral race in Chicago, which Daley won. In 1992 he joined Clinton’s presidential campaign as finance director, and he became one of Clinton’s most trusted advisers on matters of policy. Emanuel played a key role in advancing items on the Clinton agenda, most notably the North American Free Trade Agreement and the 1994 ban on assault weapons. He left politics in 1999 to work for an investment bank in Chicago, and his success in that role helped to finance his successful congressional run in 2002. He also served briefly (2000–01) on the Freddie Mac board.
Emanuel quickly reestablished himself as a major player in Democratic Party politics. After a disappointing showing nationwide in the 2004 congressional elections, the Democratic leadership turned to Emanuel, who was named head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee the following year. In that role it was his job to identify vulnerable Republican candidates, recruit suitable Democratic contenders, and secure financing to make the races competitive. The 2006 midterm elections saw the Democrats pick up 30 congressional seats and secure a majority in the House of Representatives for the first time since 1995. In 2007, at the start of the new congressional session, Emanuel was elected Democratic caucus chair. After the 2008 elections, in which the Democrats won an additional 21 congressional seats, one of President-elect Obama’s first appointments was to name Emanuel as his chief of staff.
In that post Emanuel was influential in shaping policy, and he helped secure passage of such legislation as the $787 billion stimulus and health care reform. In October 2010 he stepped down as chief of staff in order to run for mayor of Chicago in the February 2011 election. Despite legal challenges to Emanuel’s eligibility to run—Chicago election law has a 12-month residency requirement for candidates prior to the election—Emanuel prevailed, winning a majority of the vote against five candidates in the election and thus avoiding a runoff. He took office on May 16, 2011.
The city experienced solid economic growth, but Emanuel’s first term would be largely characterized by a controversial decision to shutter dozens of public schools and by Chicago’s first teachers’ strike in 25 years. The tension between the mayor’s office and the powerful Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) would contribute to the city’s first-ever mayoral runoff election, in 2015, when a strong showing by CTU-backed candidate Jesús (“Chuy”) García prevented Emanuel from securing the 50-percent-plus-one of the vote necessary to win reelection in the first round. With a well-financed campaign that focused almost entirely on addressing the city’s budgetary crisis, Emanuel emerged victorious in the April 2015 runoff.
Emanuel’s second term was dominated by controversy surrounding the shooting of Laquan McDonald, an African American teenager killed by a Chicago police officer. Although the incident occurred in October 2014, Emanuel’s office blocked the release of the video of the shooting until November 2015, when a court ordered that the footage be made public. Police statements about the shooting were sharply at odds with the events depicted in the video, and the Cook County attorney’s office promptly filed murder charges against police officer Jason Van Dyke. The city of Chicago had already paid a $5 million settlement to McDonald’s family, and, in the wake of these events, Emanuel’s support among the city’s African American community evaporated. Although Emanuel replaced the police superintendent and initiated reforms within the police department, the aura of an attempted cover-up persisted around his administration. As the field of Democratic challengers for the 2019 Chicago mayoral election began to grow, Emanuel announced in September 2018—one day before Van Dyke’s murder trial was scheduled to begin—that he would not seek a third term. His term ended in May 2019, and he was succeeded by Lori Lightfoot. The following year he published The Nation City: Why Mayors Are Now Running the World (2020).
In 2021 Pres. Joe Biden nominated Emanuel as the U.S. ambassador to Japan. Despite opposition from some Democrats who objected to his handling of McDonald’s death, Emanuel was confirmed by the Senate in December 2021. He was sworn into office shortly thereafter.