David Axelrod Biography
David Axelrod is an American political consultant, and analyst, working for CNN as a director of the University of Chicago’s non-partisan Institute of Politics and as the host of The Axe Files. He joined the CNN news team in 2015, after previously working for MSNBC.
Axelrod has worked in politics and journalism for a long time. He was President Barack Obama’s top strategist and senior advisor. He is the head of the nonpartisan Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and the host of The Axe Files, a podcast made by his institute and CNN. Axelrod has written about politics for the Chicago Tribune and worked as a media manager for 150 state, local, and national campaigns. He is also the author of “Believer: My Forty Years in Politics,” a memoir that was a bestseller in The New York Times.
Axelrod, who used to be a reporter, joined MSNBC as a senior political expert soon after leaving the White House in early 2013. He began the consulting company AKPD and is now in charge of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago. He has been one of Obama’s most trusted political advisers for a long time. His job was to help Obama with his first term as president, and he ran both his campaigns for president and the U.S. Senate in 2004. Before that, Axelrod was involved in several other important campaigns, such as Paul Simon’s for Senate and president, Harold Washington’s for mayor, Deval Patrick’s for governor, Hillary Clinton’s for U.S. Senate in 2000, and Bill Clinton and John Edwards’s for president.
Axelrod started his career as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, where he wrote about state, local, and national politics. He then started his own political consulting company. While he was a student, Axelrod wrote about politics for the Hyde Park Herald and did an internship at the Chicago Tribune.
At CNN, Scholes works alongside; Fareed Zakaria, Fredricka Whitfield, Bill Weir, Amara Walker, John Avlon, Dana Bash, John Berman, Victor Blackwell, Wolf Blitzer, Kate Bolduan, Pamela Brown, Kim Brunhuber, Erin Burnett, Alisyn Camerota, Julia Chatterley, Rosemary Church, Laura Coates, Anderson Cooper, Audie Cornish, Amanda Davies, Max Foster, Bianna Golodryga, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, Laila Harrak, Erica Hill, Michael Holmes, Van Jones, Brianna Keilar, Lynda Kinkade, John King, Melissa Knowles, Christina Macfarlane, John Miller, Veronica Miracle, Bianca Nobilo, Abby Phillip, Brad Parks, Richard Quest, Don Riddell, Michael Smerconish, Boris Sanchez, Tom Sater.
David Axelrod Salary
Axelrod earns a salary of about $50,000-$150,000.
David Axelrod Net Worth
Axelrod has an estimated net worth of about $5 Million – $10 Million which he has earned through his career as a political consultant and analyst.
David Axelrod Age
Axelrod was born on February 22, 1955, in Lower East Side, New York, United States. He is 69 years old as of 2024, and he celebrates his birthday on the 22nd of February every year.
David Axelrod Height and Weight
Axelrod stands at a height of 6 feet 2 inches tall (1.87m) and weighs 80 kgs (176 lbs).
David Axelrod Family
Axelrod was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York City to Myril Axelrod Bennett (mother) and Joseph Axelrod (father). His mother worked at a liberal-leaning daily newspaper as a journalist and also as an advertising executive at Young and Rubicam and his father worked as a psychologist. Joseph was also a baseball fan, who emigrated from Eastern Europe to the US at the young age of 11. Axelorod’s parents went separate ways when he was 8 years old. In 2021, Axelrod wrote an opinion piece for CNN in which he said that his father had serious clinical depression and had killed himself when Axelrod was 20 years old, which no one in the family knew at the time. Axelrod has a sister named Joan Axelrod Lehrich.
David Axelrod Wife and Children
Axelrod is married to Susan Landau whom they met while studying at the University of Chicago. Susan was studying business at that time and she is the daughter of physician-scientist Richard L. Landau. The couple tied the knot in 1979 and they have been blessed with three children; Lauren Axelrod and two other children whose names are not known to the public.
David Axelrod Daughter
Their first child, a girl, was born in June 1981. At seven months old, she was diagnosed with epilepsy. Axelrod says that Lauren had terrible seizures and needed a constantly changing set of drugs for a while. This made her developmentally disabled, but she was still able to go to school with other kids her age.
After high school, it was hard for her family to find programs that would keep her happy and fulfilled. In 2002, they were able to place her in Misericordia, a big group home with dorm-style rooms, where she lives an active life. From 2021, Axelrod has been supporting a flexible, mixed approach to group homes and support environments for people like his daughter. This is different from the usual approach of only going toward smaller group homes.
David Axelrod Social Media Platform
Axelrod is very active on his Twitter, and Instagram pages. He has 1.4M followers on Twitter and 18k followers on Instagram.