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CHICAGO A NEWCOMER TO THE BUSINESS OF POLITICS HAS SEEN ENOUGH TO REACH SOMECONCLUSIONS ABOUT RESTORING VOTERS’ TRUST.
Plain Dealer, The (Cleveland, OH) - Saturday, August 3, 1996
Author: JOE FROLIK NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT
EXCERPT
Before entering the race, Obama said, he spoke to about 30 elected officials in the district, which includes the integrated, middle class neighborhood around the University of Chicago as well as some of the city’s poorest precincts.
“Not one asked me where I stood on an issue,” he says, smiling.
“What they cared about was, `Who sent you? How much money you got?’
His answers were apparently good enough; the party backed his nomination.
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AIDE BRINGS OWN VISION TO CITY POST
Chicago Tribune - Sunday, December 8, 1991
Author: Wilma Randle.
Valerie Jarrett `s temporary stint at Chicago`s City Hall is turning into
quite a long affair.
Jarrett, 35, was recently named by Mayor Richard Daley to head the city`s soon-to-be-merged offices of planning and economic development. In that role
she will have a wide influence overdowntown development projects, neighborhood urban-renewal projects and the city`s numerous business-development programs. Her appointment comes only a few months after she moved from her job in
the city`s legal department to serve as Daley`s deputy chief of staff. Those
two moves, coupled with the apparent meteoric rise of her star within the
mayor`s inner circle, have set tongues wagging at City Hall.
It also has triggered talk in the city`s development circles. ``Just who
is Valerie Jarrett and why did she get this job?`` people are asking.
(snip)
//
SNEED
Chicago Sun-Times - Wednesday, October 7, 1992
Author: Michael Sneed
Tipsville . . .
Dateline: The Hiring Line - City Planning and Development Commissioner Valerie Jarrett began cleaning house Tuesday (as per Sneed’s tip Aug. 25) by hiring Deborah Mitchell as her first deputy. The kicker: “Not only have I known her (Mitchell) for eight years,” Jarrett told Sneed, “but she was once my client!” Translation: Jarrett used to be Mitchell’s lawyer!
The addendum: Jarrett’s broom is just beginning its job. There’s more to come.
(snip)
//
SNEED
Chicago Sun-Times - Thursday, October 15, 1992
Author: Michael Sneed
EXCERPT
Tipsville . . .
Dateline: City Hall - Watch for City Planning Commissioner Valerie Jarrett to hire Michelle Robinson- Obama , an assistant to Mayor Daley’s former chief of staff, Dave Mosena, as her new point person responsible for monitoring the city’s major business expansion and retention efforts.
//
KUP’S COLUMN
Chicago Sun-Times - Friday, August 11, 1995
EXCERPT
City Planning Commissioner Valerie Jarrett is hosting a private autograph party Saturday for Chicago lawyer Barack Obama , author of Dreams From My Father. Obama was the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review.
//
Commentary
Daily News, The (Batavia, NY) - Monday, August 26, 2002
a farewell to an old friend
EXCERPT
“It’s easy to stand on the sidelines and make commentary. It’s harder to apply oneself to bring about change in the world,” said state Sen. Barack Obama , whom Jarrett mentored. “That in the end was Vernon Jarrett ‘s legacy.”
They lauded a man whose parents were children of former slaves, who grew up in Paris, Tenn., during Jim Crow laws and went on to earn a degree from Knoxville College. A man who went on to work alongside W.E.B. DuBois and Langston Hughes.
//
Gala revels in Chicago blues
Chicago Sun-Times - Wednesday, February 4, 2004
Author: Mary Cameron Frey
Once again, the Black Creativity Gala at the Museum of Science and Industry kicked off Black History Month with a stunning new exhibit, “Sweet Home Chicago: Big City Blues 1946-1966.”
EXCERPT
Michelle Obama arrived with Valerie Jarrett — and a shopping bag full of “ Obama for Senator” buttons for her husband, candidate Barack Obama . “Everyone’s always asking me for them, so I thought I’d be prepared tonight,” she said.
//
STELLA’S COLUMN
Chicago Sun-Times (IL) - Tuesday, December 7, 2004
Author: Stella Foster
EXCERPT
WE WERE MAKING a joyful noise and dancing up a storm at Ebony/Jet mag’s Linda Johnson Rice and hubby Mel Farr’s holiday bash Friday. The party people included Linda’s beautiful parents, John and Eunice Johnson; radio’s Tom Joyner with wife, Donna Richardson; Johnathan Rodgers and wife, Royal Kennedy; U.S. Sen.-elect Barack Obama with lovely wife Michelle; Valerie Jarrett and Kevin Duckworth; WVON’s Melody Spann with hubby Pierre Cooper; Nora Daley Conroy and husband, Sean; Boeing’s James Bell and wife, Mary; ComEd’s Frank Clark and wife Vera; Starcom Media’s Renetta McCann with husband, Kevin; Bill Smithburg with wife, Maria, and Avis Lavelle and hubby Osekre Hoes.
(snip)
//
Obama riding momentum
Chicago Sun-Times (IL) - Thursday, October 19, 2006
Author: Lynn Sweet, The Chicago Sun-Times
Monday night, on the eve of his book tour, Sen. Barack Obama was feted by some of his closest friends and supporters.
Just a few blocks from his own house, the reception was at the Kenwood home of Barbara and Jim Bowman, the parents of Valerie Jarrett , who until recently was the treasurer of HOPEFUND, Obama ‘s national political action committee.
The guests — people who were there at the beginning of his 2004 Senate bid and some of his best donors, even comedian Bernie Mack — were given copies of The Audacity of Hope that Obama already autographed.
The invitation was sent out on behalf of Obama 2010, the war chest for Obama ‘s Senate re-election campaign — presuming, that is, if he is not elected president or vice president in 2008, a prospect that was the buzz at the party and increasingly in political circles.
(snip)
More important, she is fiercely loyal to the Obamas, whom she has known since 1991 when she persuaded Michelle Robinson to leave a high-paying law firm job to come to work on the staff of Mayor Richard M. Daley.
Then Daley’s deputy chief of staff, Jarrett reportedly assured Obama that his fiance would not be asked to do anything untoward.
“She is one of our best friends, somebody who is practically a sister,” Obama told the Wall Street Journal. “I don’t make any major decisions about asking her about them first.”
Jarrett traveled extensively with the Obamas through the long presidential campaign, playing the role of honest broker.
“I’m very frank,” she told Time. “I always tell them what I think. But that’s probably easier to do when you’re good friends.”
Her job title in the new administration will be White House senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental relations and public liaison.
Besides advising the president-elect on a wide-ranging set of issues, she told the New York Times, she will be the White House point person for state and local officials and will supervise the Office of Public Liaison, which she hopes to make a channel for government-citizen collaboration.
“The level of the engagement in the campaign was tremendous, and we want people to understand this will be their White House,” she said.
While lacking Washington experience, Jarrett has well-honed political instincts after years spent in the trenches, often playing the role of conciliator and fixer.
As a court-appointed overseer to the desegregation of public housing in Chicago, for instance, she negotiated between residents of several notorious housing projects and the real-estate developers who were replacing them with middle-income housing.
In her latest iteration, she was CEO of The Habitat Co., a real estate development and management company, as well as vice chair of the 2016 Chicago Olympic Committee, which is spearheading the city’s bid for the Summer Olympics.
Jarrett comes from a distinguished family.
Her great-grandfather was the first African-American to graduate from M.I.T., her grandfather was the first African-American to head the Chicago Housing Authority; and her father, James Bowman, is a pathologist who was the first African-American to receive tenure in the University of Chicago’s department of biological sciences.
Her mother, Barbara Bowman, is a child psychologist and co-founder of the Erikson Institute for child development in Chicago.
Her great-uncle, Vernon Jordan, is the Washington super lawyer and Clinton confidante.
Like the Obamas, she lives in Hyde Park. Her daughter, Laura Jarrett, attends Harvard Law School.
“She knows where are all the bodies have been buried in the past 30 or so years of Chicago politics and she knows all the tricks,” says one longtime Democrat political consultant in Chicago. “If Obama had a political and financial godmother, it would be Valerie.””
http://spectator.org/archives/2008/08/26/who-is-valerie-jarrett/print
Washington Prowler
Who Is Valerie Jarrett?
By The Prowler on 8.26.08 @ 12:08AM
One advantage of a big, media-focused convention is that so many shadowy campaign “insiders” seek the spotlight. In Denver, one of Sen. Barack Obama’s closest advisers has been making the media rounds: Valerie Jarrett. Jarrett has been part of Obama’s inner circle since his days as an Illinois state senator. She identifies herself as a Chicago businesswoman, but according to Obama campaign advisers, she is much more than that.
She is Iranian-American, for one thing, and the Obama campaign has sought to keep her ties to Iran from press views, as it has also sought to keep her political background and deep and tangled business and personal relationship to the Obama family from sight. For example, while it’s true that Jarrett is a business executive, she also has been a well-known political operative for Chicago Democrats back to her days working in the background as an adviser to late Chicago mayor Harold Washington, as well as the Daley family.
“She knows where are all the bodies have been buried in the past 30 or so years of Chicago politics and she knows all the tricks,” says one longtime Democrat political consultant in Chicago. “If Obama had a political and financial godmother, it would be Valerie.”
Jarrett, according to friends, gave Michelle Obama professional advice before she married Obama, and helped her with jobs. But more important, say Chicago Democrats who know Jarrett and Obama’s history, and why the Obama campaign has desperately sought to keep Jarrett’s role in the campaign under wraps, Jarrett may be to Obama what James McDougal was to Bill and Hillary Clinton. McDougall, a central figure in the Clinton’s Whitewater Scandal, gave the Clintons the financial wherewithal to raise their national political visibility. “Jarrett has done that for Barack and Michelle three or four times over,” says one insider, noting that Jarrett served as the CEO of a housing development company.
And Obama has returned the favor:
Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which developed and managed large housing projects in and around Chicago — and in Obama’s state legislative district — that were subsidized by federal and state housing dollars, and which were ultimately seized by federal authorities for what were unlivable conditions. While overseeing the company that managed these housing facilities, Jarrett also worked with long-time Obama friend and convicted felon Tony Rezko in raising money for Obama’s political career.
Obama campaign advisers have sought to have Jarrett fully vetted by the campaign to prepare for opposition research from the McCain campaign, fearing that she may have deeper and longstanding ties to financial entities associated with the subprime mortgage scandal.
“That and her ties to Chicago politicians and her Iranian background, and you have a potential nightmare,” says a Democrat media consultant who worked for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Say what you want about Hillary, but she didn’t have that kind of a triple threat on her team.”