The Anti-Obama
CONTINETTI, MATTHEW
The Anti- Obama He no longer has an official opponent, but Justin Warfel is still on his case. BY MATTHEW CONTINETTI ON JULY 27, Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in...
...Were we best friends, were we congenial acquaintances...
...The Ivy League followed: first Columbia, and then, after four years working as a community activist in Chicago, Harvard Law...
...When Obama was 2, his father left the family to return to Kenya, where he eventually became finance minister...
...Also, he has an unusual life story—unusual enough that he published a memoir, Dreams from My Father, before becoming an Illinois state senator...
...Every now and then he checks the nasty emails...
...Some people say he's a runaway freight train...
...This is what makes Warfel frustrated...
...Now the number is 39 percent...
...I asked Justin Warfel whether Obama's biography explains his appeal...
...In June, however, Ryan pulled out of the race...
...And he feels no ill will towards Obama...
...I never would do that...
...Before video cameras, trackers—often young, ambitious party flacks—would follow candidates with tape recorders...
...His voice was intense...
...He cast votes for gun control and tax hikes and expanded government health care...
...He scoffed...
...You have Tom Daschle...
...Obama falls into the bright new talent category...
...He told reporters he would return to Chicago eventually...
...Chicago, he said, was "an ideal laboratory...
...A court had released embarrassing testimony from a child custody battle with his ex-wife, the actress Jeri Ryan...
...I can't imagine a situation where you could legally tape someone when they were having a private conversation...
...He claimed he couldn't speak to his wife without me taping his conversation...
...He paused thoughtfully...
...Perhaps too much...
...Do you take a volunteer," Warfel said, "and put someone in that position...
...Maybe I'll read about it in the paper," Warfel said by phone the other day, as he walked outside his home in Springfield, Illinois...
...Articles in the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times soon followed...
...Or do you take someone else, hire an outside agent...
...Obama had made the young man a campaign issue...
...as well...
...Before that, the tools of choice were pad and pencil...
...Obama had his people tracking Jack Matthew Continetti is a reporter at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Then he groaned...
...Warfel says his problem is with Obama's politics...
...That's not true either," Warfel said...
...But when you look at the issues, on abortion, on the gun issue, well, it's scary...
...He's got so many people into thinking he is not the far-left candidate he is...
...I heard my name coming out of his mouth," Warfel said...
...He never made any attempts to call any of his family members while I was tracking him...
...In 1990, he was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review and saw his first round of adulatory press...
...His mother was 18...
...You had a superlative candidate...
...The one thing people don't see is the way he's voted over the past seven years in the Illinois state senate...
...The thing is, Obama's positions are mainstream Democratic ones these days: "The convention frames where the party is," Warfel went on...
...He paused...
...He just happened to be the subject of that job...
...He won his state senate seat in 1996...
...Then Obama returned alone to Hawaii, where he was raised by his grandparents and attended Punahou, a tony prep school...
...Tracking is nothing new...
...It was already clear that Obama wanted to enter politics...
...You have Barack Obama...
...And the press played into his hands...
...They only have one choice: Vote for Republican candidates...
...senator since Reconstruction ended in 1876...
...Obama himself doesn't really interest me," he said...
...It was a lot of four-letter words," Warfel said...
...He was against the Iraq war, against last year's $87 billion appropriation for reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, against both Bush tax cuts...
...For a while he was seeing a lot of the 42-year-old Obama...
...Once, not so long ago, Obama received an 88 percent approval rating from the Illinois Chamber of Commerce...
...The calls were frequent, unending...
...But he has no proof...
...Oh," he said...
...Millions of people will watch him on July 27...
...His assignment to track Obama came much later...
...One journalist said Warfel was "bald...
...In his years in the state senate, Obama amassed a left-liberal voting record...
...The keynote address is a coveted opportunity, a chance for silver-haired politicos to deliver their swan song to an adoring crowd, or for bright new talent to make its debut...
...Another lefty website claimed Warfel was a Dungeons & Dragons fanatic...
...And he played it well...
...What voters see during an election cycle is a candidate's campaign commercials," he said...
...The question of who exactly would track Obama was the subject of some debate in the Ryan camp, however...
...A young man named Justin Warfel won't be one of them...
...For about two weeks in May, Warfel, his Panasonic digital video recorder in hand, followed Obama everywhere the candidate went, to campaign events in downstate Illinois, to speeches at the capitol in Springfield, to press gaggles outside campaign headquarters—day after day, sunrise to sunset...
...Ryan, a former investment banker, had no government experience, for another...
...And if you'd had a situation where the Illinois Republican party rallied around their candidate, the court stuff would have been a two-day story, and Jack would have gone on to win in the end...
...The press wrote that you taped his phone conversations with his wife and two daughters, I said...
...What's scary, though, is that he's able to portray himself in a moderate light...
...If he is elected this November, he will become only the third black U.S...
...You had a guy with firm beliefs...
...According to AP Warfel "held the camera less than two feet from Obama's face, barking questions and interrupting Obama's conversations with reporters...
...Jack" is Jack Ryan, who until recently was Obama's Republican opponent, as well as Warfel's employer...
...He and Hillary Clinton will be the best of friends in the Senate...
...It's taking politics to a whole other level," Obama told the Associated Press...
...His cell phone number and email address were posted on a lefty blogger's web page...
...That's another game: Dragon Dice...
...He cast votes in support of partial-birth abortion...
...Then there is Obama himself...
...But times change...
...He chose his words carefully...
...Warfel, who is 24, joined Jack Ryan's campaign last October, starting out as a regional coordinator responsible for Central Illinois...
...One day in May, Warfel walked down a hall in the state capitol towards the tall, thin Obama, who was speaking to a group of reporters, photographers, and television camera crews...
...I used to play it in college...
...You have the two most liberal senators on the presidential ticket...
...Unfortunately, there is no Republican candidate for the Senate seat in Illinois...
...They entertain him...
...It's something countless other campaigns have done before," Warfel said...
...It's like playing Risk...
...It was a clever move...
...He was a tracker: a campaign operative who engages in hands-on opposition research by recording all that an opponent says or does...
...Well, I was doing a job...
...He glosses over his opposition to NAFTA and his desire to "reexamine" trade agreements while advertising his support for "globalization" in the abstract...
...A combination of factors plagued the Ryan campaign: Illinois has been trending Democratic, for one...
...There was never personal animosity between he and I," he said...
...Suddenly "they were tracking me...
...He is a brilliant man and an impressive orator...
...Abandoned, Obama's mother, an anthropologist, married a man who worked in the oil business...
...The family moved to Indonesia, where they spent four years...
...When these are your leaders on a national scale, what does that say to conservative Democrats...
...That's the single most erroneous piece of reporting I've ever seen...
...After Obama bested six other candidates (one of whom spent about $29 million) in the Democratic primary, the Ryan campaign wanted to compare Obama's liberal primary message with his new, slightly more moderate general election one...
...So I suppose it's inevitable" that Obama wins, Warfel said...
...Never happened," Warfel said...
...The cameras, the lights, and the press all shifted their attention from the candidate to Warfel...
...Warfel suspects the Obama campaign leaked his personal information...
...He stops short of the bathroom, but gets me right when I come back out...
...another said he had "a shaved head...
...It was too late...
...Dogs barked in the distance...
...A car passed in the distance...
...Obama was born in 1961 in Hawaii, where his father, a student from Kenya, was studying economics...
...Also not correct," Warfel continued...
...He spoke on his cell phone...
...Warfel started receiving menacing phone calls...
...Warfel became the bete noire of the Obama campaign...
...William Finnegan, writing in the New Yorker, called Warfel's methods "unusually aggressive...
...And yet, by the time he dropped out, Ryan was clearly losing the race to Obama...
...Warfel was glum...
...His bosses chose Warfel...
...Warfel was no stalker...
...Senate in Illinois, will deliver the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in Boston...
...Warfel kept his camera running, taping the cameras taping him...
...You know, you're sitting around the dorm room, looking for something to do...
...One poll showed him as much as 20 points behind...
...Yeah," he said...
...The job did not turn out as expected...
...Jack's campaign was a good campaign," Warfel said...
...Obama wanted to be viewed as a victim of the Jack Ryan campaign...
...Warfel, who now spends his days "relaxing," thinks Ryan was betrayed by the Illinois Republican party in general and chairwoman Judy Baar Topinka in particular...
...That's not an accurate picture of who Barack Obama is...
Vol. 9 • August 2004 • No. 44
