Looks like David Axelrod is trying to push back against talk that Valerie Jarrett, a close friend and adviser to Barack Obama, may have abruptly pulled out of the contest for the president-elect’s Senate seat because she had an idea of how the governor was approaching the task of filling the seat.
Bloomberg reports that Axelrod, Obama’s top strategist, told an audience last night at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government:
[Obama’] preference was always that she serve in the White House, and ultimately he expressed that to her and said look, ‘I just need you,’ and that’s why she made that decision.
Jarrett withdrew from contention days after a Nov. 10 conference call where, according to charging documents filed by prosecutors, Blagojevich talked about appointing “Senate Candidate 1” in exchange for his wife getting a corporate board appointment. Soon afterwards, Jarrett was announced as a White House adviser to Obama.
The Chicago Tribune has identified Jarrett as Senate Candidate 1.
Axelrod added:
No one in their wildest imagination could have imagined the scenario that ensued. There’s a vacancy, the governor, apparently, in the complaint of the government had some ideas about what to do with it. We were not involved in that discussion or any discussion of that nature.