238 Barack H. Obama: The Unauthorized BiographyBARKY’S FIRST FOE: MARSON BLAIR HULL, OPTIONS MILLIONAIRE
The most dangerous opponent for Obama was Blair Hull, usually considered the richest person
to have ever run for statewide office in Illinois. Hull’s financial resources, accumulated during a
career as an investment banker with Goldman Sachs, were unusually formidable, and Hull was also
determined to avoid the rich man’s fallacy that everything necessary for a campaign can simply be
bought with money, whereas in reality there are some things that political organizing alone can
accomplish. As we read in an Internet source,
...in early polls leading up to the March 16, 2004, primary election, candidate Blair Hull
enjoyed a substantial lead and widespread name recognition resulting from a well-financed
advertisement effort. He contributed over $28 million of his personal wealth to the campaign.
However, Hull was soon embroiled by allegations of domestic abuse. Marson Blair Hull, Jr.
(born September 3, 1942), commonly known as Blair Hull, is an American businessman and
politician, notable for his attempt to win the Democratic Party nomination to serve in the United
States Senate from Illinois in 2004. He is the founder and CEO of the Hull Group, an equity
option market making firm that was sold to Goldman Sachs. He is currently chairman and chief
executive officer of Matlock Capital a family office. In early media polls leading up to the
March 16, 2004 primary election, Hull enjoyed a substantial lead and widespread name
recognition resulting from a well-financed advertisement effort. He contributed over $28
million of his personal wealth for the campaign. When allegations that Hull had abused his ex-
wife were made by the media, Hull’s poll numbers dropped and he failed to win the nomination.
Illinois State Senator Barack Obama later became the nominee. Challenger Barack Obama, an
Illinois state senator, won endorsements from four Illinois congressmen and former DNC
chairman David Wilhelm, increasing his name recognition among voters. In the final weeks of
the campaign, Obama’s primary campaign gathered support from favorable media coverage and
an advertising campaign designed by David Axelrod. The ads featured images of U.S. Senator
Paul M. Simon and the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington; the support of Simon’s
daughter; and the endorsement of most of the state’s major papers, including the Chicago
Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. In the March primary, Obama won a majority of support,
earning 52% of the vote, fueled by an overwhelming victory in Cook County, including
Chicago. (Wikipedia on Blair Hull)^96
This account captures certain features of the reality of what went on, but it stops at the
superficial level of phenomenon and is unable to explain anything in terms of causation.
THE ATLANTIC PROFILES HULL:
SELF-FINANCED CANDIDATES ARE VULNERABLE TO SCANDALS
We can begin to understand the surprising fall of Blair Hull more adequately once we recognize
that Hull’s campaign had been extensively observed and profiled over a period of months by a
number of journalists and operatives linked to institutions that would later emerge as key centers of
support for Obama. The most egregious example is that of the Atlantic Monthly, in many ways the
flagship magazine of the Boston and New York banking establishment in the same way that the
New York Times is their newspaper of record. The Atlantic Monthly became one of the first house
organs of pro-Obama hysteria in December 2007, with an adulatory cover story celebrating the
Perfect Master by neocon Andrew Sullivan. One suspects that the Atlantic Monthly has cultivated a
benevolent interest in the career of Obama going back several decades, as several other financier
institutions had. In any case, by the spring of 2004 the Atlantic Monthly had assigned an