Feb. 26--One of Rahm Emanuel's most trusted aides announced Thursday that he's departing City Hall after nearly five years by the mayor's side.
David Spielfogel, Emanuel's senior adviser and closest confidant on staff, said he'll leave his government post next week to start a technology company. Spielfogel has served as a key deputy to Emanuel since May 2011, making him one of the few top aides remaining on the mayor's staff since he first took office.
"There's never a good time to leave," Spielfogel said, "but we have a very strong team here and this seemed like the right juncture after five years to transition out."
Known as a policy wonk and strategist, Spielfogel advised Emanuel on rolling out various initiatives, from the pursuit of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and Barack Obama Presidential Center to the city's new ride-sharing ordinance and a minimum wage increase. Spielfogel has been a fixture in senior-level meetings, determining not just how to form the mayor's projects but also how to message them.
It's a focus he also had on both of Emanuel's mayoral campaigns.
Spielfogel met Emanuel after serving as deputy campaign manager on Democrat Alexi Giannoulias' failed U.S. Senate bid in 2010. Spielfogel signed on as the policy and research director of Emanuel's first campaign.
After Emanuel won, Spielfogel helped lead the transition effort into City Hall. And as the mayor's bid for re-election tightened up last year, Spielfogel temporarily left his government post to work on the campaign.
Privately dubbed "the Rahm whisperer," one of his chief campaign roles was preparing Emanuel for televised debates. But aides also have said Spielfogel was called over to the campaign to try to keep the notoriously short-fused Emanuel calm and collected as the mayor spent most of his time away from City Hall during his re-election bid.
Before debates and news conferences, Spielfogel often was the last person to confer with the mayor on the tone and substance of his message. And along with campaign manager and former City Hall aide Michael Ruemmler, Spielfogel helped spearhead a campaign strategy that offered few unscripted interactions between the mayor and voters.
That effort was buttressed by Emanuel's sizable campaign war chest, which allowed the mayor to spend millions on TV ads proclaiming to Chicagoans that he would alter his in-your-face style and listen more in a second term.
So far, however, that term largely has been dominated by a series of crises -- including the federal guilty plea of former Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett in a corruption scheme, the Laquan McDonald police shooting scandal and the U.S. Justice Department investigation into the Chicago Police Department. Much of Spielfogel's time of late had been focused on managing the fallout, from drafting new police procedures to helping roll out the mayor's new police task force.
Spielfogel acknowledged he planned to leave City Hall sooner, but the series of events left him staying on staff longer to address the issues.
Asked what he'd learned from being at the center of high-pressure moments like the teachers strike, school closings and police shootings, Spielfogel said it was to value more input.
"Our biggest lesson from the last five years is that you want as many people in the tent for solving problems as possible. We move at a very fast pace, and it's easy to take action without bringing in a diverse set of views," Spielfogel said. "I think we've learned to be more inclusive in who we work with and who we bring in to help with the decision-making."
Spielfogel said his next move would be to "start my own business that looks at the use of technology in solving urban problems." He declined to elaborate, other than to say he'd partner with innovators he'd met through his role in the mayor's office to start the company. Spielfogel said he had no plans to do business with the city.
He announced his departure in a self-deprecating memo to the mayor's staff late Thursday that ended on a positive note.
"We built something incredible together, we weathered very painful storms, we fought for things we believed in, and every day we come back no matter how much we're being beaten down," Spielfogel wrote. "We've learned a lot of lessons, we've gotten better at what we do, and we've changed the city for the better."
bruthhart@tribpub.com
