The Magazine of The University of Montana

Obama's Fixer

UM Grad Messina A Key Presidential Aide

By Erin P. Billings | Photos by Doug Graham

UM Grad Messina

In 1980 when he was just eleven years old, Jim Messina realized what he wanted to be when he grew up.

A student at Roosevelt Elementary in Boise, Idaho, and clearly ineligible to vote, Messina volunteered to serve as his school’s campaign manager for President Jimmy Carter’s re-election bid. Carter would go on to lose the race to Ronald Reagan, but Messina ended up with the spoils—having decided on a career in politics.

Fast forward through fifteen campaigns, ten states, and nearly three decades. Messina now sits in a sparsely decorated, 12-by-10-foot, windowless office just a stone’s throw from the Oval Office. His job: deputy chief of staff to President Barack Obama.

“I’ve always loved politics,” says Messina, a 1993 University of Montana graduate, speaking on a February afternoon in the heart of the West Wing. “I guess I understood very early that if you wanted to make a change and to affect the issues that you care about, the single best way was to elect people that shared your values.

“You could run yourself and be one person trying to make change, or go elect twenty-five or thirty or however many people I’ve helped elect and have a whole group of people making the change you believe in.”

At just thirty-nine, Messina’s trajectory in politics has been swift.

Messina first got to know Obama on Capitol Hill, where as chief of staff to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) he was able to closely watch and work alongside the newly elected Democratic senator from Illinois. Obama would end up hiring Messina barely three years later as his national chief of staff to help him take on Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for the presidency.

“

So,’ I said, ‘Senator Obama called and asked me to be his national chief of staff.’ Max turned to me and said, ‘Of course he has. You are the best choice.

”

Obama’s job offer would come on a Friday in June 2008, the day both Messina and Baucus were heading off to Montana to attend the wedding of Baucus’ son, Zeno.

Breaking the news to Baucus, the man Messina calls the “single most important influence in my life” and for whom he has worked five separate times, wasn’t easy.

“I was so nervous,” Messina recalls, saying he nearly threw up as he made his way to Baucus’ private Capitol office that afternoon. “‘So,’ I said, ‘Senator Obama called and asked me to be his national chief of staff.’ Max turned to me and said, ‘Of course he has. You are the best choice.’

“And then he looked at me and said, ‘So this weekend I am losing both of my sons,’ and we both started crying.”

Baucus remembers the day vividly, beaming as he talks about the “terrific opportunity” for his off-again, on-again aide, whom he calls a “near genius” when it comes to politics. Even though Baucus was in the throes of his own Senate re-election bid, letting Messina head off to Chicago to join the presidential campaign required no convincing.

“I said, ‘Jim, don’t give it a second thought,’” Baucus says. “He’s such a talented, wonderful person. And like a father, I want the best for him. The more he succeeds, the more quickly he succeeds, the happier I am.”

Messina spent the next five months at Obama’s campaign headquarters plotting strategy, helping manage operations, and making the trains run on time. The hours were long, but the payoff great. Unlike his first presidential campaign twenty-eight years earlier, Messina didn’t lose this time.

“I think I had been building momentum for election night with Barack,” Messina says of his career.

He had taken a leave from Baucus’ office, but Messina never went back. Instead, Obama kept him close, asking him to help lead his transition by assembling key staff, vetting prospective Cabinet appointees, and preparing the strategy and blueprints for the new administration.

In November, Messina was offered—and accepted—the charge of deputy chief of staff under Rahm Emanuel, the tough-as-nails former Chicago congressman whom many say Messina resembles.

Messina brushes aside talk of a likeness. “I don’t think I’m that good. He’s the best. He’s who everyone else gets measured against.”

But in the few short months since Messina started working at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., he has made his mark. He shares the deputy title with Mona Sutphen; he is charged with operations, she with policy. He fixes things, troubleshoots, and works to telegraph political problems before they happen.

“Jim Messina is the most powerful person in Washington that you haven’t heard of,” says Dan Pfeiffer, deputy White House communications director. “Whenever the president or his chief of staff has a problem that needs to be fixed, they turn to him.”

Messina’s relationships on Capitol Hill may be his strongest asset. Having worked for Baucus and served as top aide to Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), Messina knows both sides of Congress intimately. That, more than anything else, makes him valuable, White House officials say—particularly for a president trying to pass an ambitious agenda in a time of economic crisis.

“There’s no question he’s an integral part of that operation,” says Barrett Kaiser, Baucus’ spokesman and Messina’s close friend of more than a decade.

Not only was Messina involved in helping Obama narrow his list of Cabinet nominees, he also was called in when they ran into trouble. In the case of Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, for instance, Messina was dispatched to temper Senate concerns after it was revealed that the former New York Federal Reserve president failed to pay his taxes on time. That reputation has become so cemented that in a recent Washington Post article Messina was dubbed “the fixer.”

Messina in his White House office

The moniker isn’t surprising, particularly for those who know him. Messina loves a challenge—the more vexing, the better. And it’s always been that way.

Robert Gibbs, Obama’s press secretary, says Messina is “the type of guy that you are thankful to be working with instead of against.”

Kaiser remembers his first interaction with Messina in 1998. Kaiser was president of the Associated Students of The University of Montana, and Baucus was heading to Missoula to host the Chinese ambassador’s visit to the campus. Messina, then one of Baucus’ legislative assistants in Washington, smelled trouble.

Fearing student-led protests over Tibet, Messina called on Kaiser to negotiate a deal: Convince the students to take their objections downtown and avoid a direct, and politically embarrassing, interface on campus with Baucus and the ambassador. It worked, and Kaiser ended up as Baucus’ and the ambassador’s guest at dinner that night.

“Messina’s always been fixing things as long as I can remember,” Kaiser says.

Messina left Idaho for Big Sky Country in 1988 as a stick-thin, fresh-faced, UM freshman. The son of public school and city government workers, neither of whom had much interest in politics, Messina’s adoption of Montana as his new home and embrace of campaigns and government as a career were seemingly organic.

He took to Montana almost instantly as he walked onto Missoula’s campus. He was a quick devotee of Grizzly football (he says he could die happy if Obama ever makes it to a game) and spent little time deciding on a political science major. Within two years Messina pursued an internship in Helena during the 1991 legislative session.

He had signed up late and had to settle for a job as an aide to a handful of rank-and-file lawmakers. Yet within days, Messina managed to land a better job doing press for the House Democratic leadership. By the time the session ended, Messina had won three job offers from the three Democrats running for governor in 1992: Dorothy Bradley, Mike McGrath, and Frank Morrison. Messina chose Morrison.

Morrison “got stomped” in the primary, Messina recalls, but that loss didn’t dissuade him from wanting to work on campaigns. The day after Morrison’s defeat, Messina says the state Democratic Party called him and hired the “hippie from Missoula” to run legislative races in Eastern Montana.

A few more losses would come Messina’s way. The early 1990s weren’t strong years for Montana Democrats, particularly in the eastern half of the state. That year, Messina says, only two of his legislative candidates won.

Scott McColloch, then the incumbent Democratic House member from Billings, was one of Messina’s two success stories that year. McColloch, now a field director for the MEA-MFT, remembers a “skinny kid with big glasses showing up at my door” one evening to say he was running the campaign.

McColloch was dubious at best, saying he didn’t believe a college student from Missoula knew much about politics, much less how to run races at the opposite end of the state. But McColloch—who admits to walking lazily into his re-election that year—says, “He convinced me that maybe I should be out there working.

“Jim knew how to win races. He just had that sense that you’ve got to go out there and do the hard work,” he says. “He taught me that you got to be out there, not just throwing signs up, but letting people see you face-to-face. Jim always stressed that you’ve got to listen, and they’ve got to do most of the talking.”

“He never sleeps,” adds Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), whom Messina quietly advised during his successful 2006 challenge of Sen. Conrad Burns. “He works endlessly on these campaigns.”

Dan Kemmis, former Missoula mayor whose 1993 re-election bid Messina also managed, says for a young kid—Messina was finishing up at UM at the time Kemmis’ race kicked off—he clearly had a very slim learning curve. Messina, Kemmis says, “just had an innate sense of how to do all of it.”

Kemmis’ campaign was a challenge. The city recently had been annexed, and Messina had to help Kemmis overcome an early 12-percentage point deficit to Republican Mark Helean. By galvanizing angry female voters in the aftermath of a bombing of the nearby Blue Mountain Clinic, which performed abortions, Messina hatched a winning strategy.

“That was the first time I realized that negative campaigning could be very effective,” Messina says.

After Kemmis, there would be numerous other campaigns. Messina traveled to New York and North Dakota, back to Montana, and on to Alaska. Messina won many of those races, but he also lost a few, and he still steams over the defeats.

Besides Obama’s race, Messina considers his role in helping Tester oust Burns his second greatest achievement, while he calls his biggest setback his failure to help former Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles (D) topple Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2004.

“I am still haunted by it,” says Messina, who worked on Knowles’ campaign in its final four months. “I know I am never going to lose again.”

Though he often flies below the radar, Messina’s reputation in Montana and Washington is well-known. To his friends, he is as much a workaholic as he is a practical joker. He is loyal and forgiving. Yet Messina isn’t without detractors, and even those close to him say because of the hard realities of politics, Messina has made a few enemies along the way.

Still, even one-time rivals say they respect him.

Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) got his first real look at Messina in 1996 when he waged an unsuccessful bid to unseat Baucus in the Senate. Rehberg says Messina, who worked on Baucus’ campaign, “just gets it. He doesn’t have to learn it. You are either born with it or not. And he has it.”

Rehberg and Messina forged a friendship over the last few years when Messina was working as Baucus’ chief of staff. The two men still get together from time to time, taking turns buying each other a beer (Rehberg says it’s Messina’s tab next time). But Rehberg is under no illusions that if given the chance, Messina wouldn’t try to wrest him of his seat.

“I don’t kid myself for a heartbeat that Messina or Rahm wouldn’t try to beat me if they could,” Rehberg says. “It’s all politics.”

Yet when it comes to friendships, Messina is fiercely loyal. His closest relationships continue to be with current and former Montanans, and are long-lasting. Messina says it’s because he’s Italian.

Once a year, for instance, Messina reassembles with a half-dozen one-time Montana residents for a weeklong trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. He even made the trip last December, despite being charged with helping orchestrate Obama’s transition to power.

“He’s a down-to-earth kind of guy,” says Bill Chaloupka, a former UM political science professor who now teaches at Colorado State University and takes the Mexico trip each year. “There he was with a taco on the beach in Puerto Vallarta, just as comfortable as the rest of us. I was surprised he was going to do it this year. He would have his daily conference call, holding his briefing book and doing it all in a T-shirt and swimming trunks at the top of the house.”

Dave Hunter, clerk of the Montana House and a longtime Montana Democratic operative, says Messina—while he can’t seem to keep a girlfriend for very long—never abandons a friend. Hunter, a close friend who met Messina seventeen years ago during the 1992 gubernatorial primary, calls him “the same kind of grounded guy” he’s always been, regardless of who signs his paychecks.

For Messina, it all leads back to Montana. He says he is as connected to the place as he is to its people. In his will, he has instructed that his ashes be spread across the University’s “M.” He boasts of his land in Bozeman, and the home he has in Missoula.

Asked about his future, Messina says only two things are certain—it will include Montana and politics.

“I’m going to be that seventy-year-old guy managing city council races in Missoula, just going negative,” Messina says. “That’s how I want to die.”

About the Author

Erin P. Billings ’95 is the senior news editor at Roll Call, a newspaper and Web site exclusively devoted to covering Congress. She began editing full time in 2008 after having spent more than a dozen years working as a reporter on Capitol Hill and at the Lee Newspapers State Bureau in Helena. She currently resides in Washington, D.C., with her husband, Jay Driscoll ’95.