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Fighting for The Spoils

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/21/AR2006102101049_pf.html

"They all play to win, those Emanuel boys. Rahm is the middle son of three. His big brother, Ezekiel, is a Harvard oncologist and bioethicist. Younger brother Ari is a high-flying agent in Los Angeles. He made news recently as the only major agent to publicly call for an industrywide shunning of Mel Gibson following the actor's drunken, anti-Semitic tirade. Their baby sister, Shoshana, is a student.

Yes, the folks are mighty proud, Rahm says. How many mothers have two children who have partly inspired TV characters (Josh Lyman on "The West Wing" for Rahm, Ari Gold on "Entourage" for Ari)?

"People ask me what my mother put in the soup," says Ari, who talks with Rahm two or three times a day. "I wish I knew. I have three boys of my own."

Their father is a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who came to the United States after working for the pre-independence Israeli underground. In Chicago, he met Emanuel's mother, an X-ray technician and daughter of a local union organizer who ended up in more than one paddy wagon as a protester in the 1960s. "Politics and the civil rights movement were very much a part of our family life," says Ezekiel. "We went on Martin Luther King's march on Cicero with my mom."

When Rahm was 17, he cut his finger on a meat slicer at Arby's, where he worked a summer job. It became infected, the infection spread to the bone, and a cut grew into a potentially life-threatening condition. Doctors eventually amputated the finger, and Emanuel spent eight weeks in the hospital. He says the experience made him more focused for college and beyond.

"He blames me for ending up at Sarah Lawrence," says Ezekiel, who thought a small Eastern college would suit his brother better than a big school. "But he loved it. He loved being around all those women."

The young Rahm wasn't particularly political. That passion emerged during college when he starting working with the advocacy group Common Cause. Later, he landed on a few campaigns, including Paul Simon's successful first Senate race in 1984. Almost immediately Emanuel proved a peerless fundraiser. Richard M. Daley hired him to dial up dollars for his successful mayoral run in 1989. Two years later, Emanuel got a job in the soon-to-be-legendary "War Room" of Clinton's upstart presidential campaign in Little Rock."