N.J. man named to Obama's team: Seton Hall professor tapped to oversee policy development
BY JOHN FARMER
Star-Ledger Staff
Friday, February 09, 2007
As Democratic Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois gets ready to announce his run for president tomorrow, Mark C. Alexander, a 42-year-old Seton Hall University law professor and Montclair resident, is preparing to direct the candidate's issues team.
With the title of "policy director," Alexander said he will work to develop positions and policy options for Obama on such critical topics as Iraq, health care, energy alternatives, the Israel-Palestinian struggle and how to deal with the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran.
Alexander said he served a similar function when he worked on former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley's 2000 presidential campaign and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's 1998 re-election campaign in Massachusetts. "It's basically the same job," Alexander said in an interview at his law school office. "It's public policy."
Alexander said he owes his connection with Obama to his sister Elizabeth, now a professor at Yale Law School. She introduced them "10 or 12 years ago" when she and Obama were teaching law at the University of Chicago.
"She recognized we had a lot in common," Alexander said -- young lawyers, with liberal political leanings, active in community organizing, both African-American.
The two men kept in touch over the years, Alexander said, and in recent months talked about Obama's presidential campaign prospects. "I made it clear I'd be happy to help," Alexander said, and Obama asked him aboard about a month ago.
He'll take a leave of absence from his tenured post at Seton Hall at the end of February to begin recruiting a policy staff and shaping an Obama issues agenda.
Representatives of the not-yet-official campaign did not return phone calls yesterday seeking comment on Alexander's planned role.
In a sense, the policy post is more important for Obama than for most of his rivals in the crowded Democratic field simply because he is so new to national politics. Candidates such as Sens. Hillary Clinton, Christopher Dodd and Joe Biden and former vice presidential candidate John Edwards are recognized commodities with established positions on major issues, such as Iraq and health care. With only two years in the Senate and a brief legislative record in Illinois, Obama brings a clean slate to the campaign -- or an empty one, his rivals might contend.
It will be Alexander's job to fill that slate with positions designed to find favor with Democratic voters, interest groups and activists who will choose the nominee. He won't have much time. The first campaign debate is slated for early April this year, a full 20 months before the November 2008 election.
Alexander said he will spend his first weeks on the job in Washington, D.C., tapping into the Democratic think tanks and consulting with issue specialists on Capitol Hill, before settling into Obama's campaign headquarters in Chicago.
As he described it, his job will be heavily "managerial" -- recruiting staff, soliciting advice from outside experts, and filtering through the many options available on most issues. He'll also seek part-time help -- "say, a professor in Asian studies, (on North Korea's nuclear ambitions.). We'll ask, 'Can you come to Washington for a day? Or do a conference call. Or write a white paper for us?'"
In some cases, Alexander said, he'll recommend a specific position on a key issue; in others his job will be to give Obama options to choose from.
"Iraq is front and center" among the issues Obama faces, he said, along with energy and health care. "We have some ideas we're working on," Alexander said. He said he's not ready to talk about specifics.
Alexander, a tall, lean man with gray-speckled hair and a easy manner, grew up in Washington, D.C., and is married with three children ranging in age from 7 to 13. He graduated from Yale with a degree in architecture, but after working in Kennedy's U.S. Senate office he decided his real love was law and public policy and went back to Yale for a law degree.
The public figure he most admires is Lyndon Johnson, whose civil right reforms ended the Jim Crow era in the South -- and also Democratic Party dominance there.
Asked about race as factor in the Obama campaign, Alexander said "it has an impact on all of us. But it's different than a generation ago or a generation before that," he added. "It's not going away. But it's not 'I'm going to vote against you because you're black or for you because you're black.' This is not a simple-minded monolithic country. I have no doubt he can win the presidency."
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