Rick Wade, a senior adviser, Stacey Brayboy, the state campaign manager, and
Anton Gunn, the state political director, took turns to beseech their boss.
The gala, they told Obama, would be attended by more than 2,000
college-educated African-American women, a constituent group that was
originally sceptical of the candidate’s “blackness”. They would be
in and out in five minutes. Obama’s irritation grew. “Man, it’s late,
I’m tired,” he snapped. The three knew what their only option was at
this point. “If you want him to do something,” Gunn would later
tell me, “there are two people he’s not going to say no to: Valerie
Jarrett and Michelle Obama.”
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