This Chicago deli is a second office for DNC veterans like Obama, Axelrod and now AOC

CHICAGO — It was not yet 11 a.m. on Wednesday when Mark Leibovich, a political writer for The Atlantic , tucked into a bowl of chicken soup here at the legendary Manny’s delicatessen. A panel of pollsters was parsing the identity politics of the presidential race — how Asians and Latinos are flocking to Kamala Harris, why Donald Trump is appealing to  Black male voters — beneath a glass wall etched in gold letters: corned beef, pastrami, rugelach, knishes, gefilte fish.

Leibovich and about 80 other top journalists, analysts and activists had come to hear David Axelrod, former President Barack Obama’s political brain and a Chicagoan who has long made Manny’s his second office. Some stayed for the cafeteria-style lunch buffet: oversized latkes, kishke, sweet and sour cabbage soup, noodle kugel and more.

“The soup was excellent, although I was hoping for matzo balls,” Leibovich said afterwards.

“That’s not a kvetch!” he added quickly. “Manny’s was tremendous, as advertised. I’d never been, but it felt like a homecoming. I love a good deli, especially when away from home and in an unruly, chaotic environment like a political convention.”

On the sidelines of the Democratic National Convention, there are Jewish events, like Wednesday morning’s panel discussion on American Jews after Oct. 7 and a daily afternoon “schmooze” hosted by the Jewish Democratic Council of America, where politicians from heavily Jewish districts speak about supporting Israel and fighting antisemitism. And then there are Jew-ish events like Axelrod’s briefing at Manny’s, where a collared priest, Monsignor Kenneth Velo of Chicago, was among the attendees and the war in Gaza didn’t come up until almost the last question.

(The consensus on the panel was that after months of worry that leftists would not turn out for  President Joe Biden because of his unabashed support of Israel, the switch to Vice President Kamala Harris had neutralized the war as a factor in November.)

I first visited Manny’s more than 20 years ago, when I was Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times and Obama was a little-known state senator. Axelrod, a former newspaperman turned political consultant, knew where all the bodies were buried, and Manny’s was where he took meetings.

It still is, though it’s been years since he indulged in the traditional menu: “I mostly have salads,” he told me after the crowds had cleared Wednesday.

“I come here for the ambience,” he explained. “This is my home away from home. It’s a place where you can get a real cross-section of people — different races, different classes, different outlooks. I always bring politicians here to campaign. And you often see politicians coming here just to eat.”

This week, that has included the vice presidential also-rans Govs. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Roy Cooper of North Carolina; the (Jewish) mayor of Louisville, Craig Greenberg; much of the Illinois delegation; and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who had a corned-beef sandwich. “She finished it,” noted Danny Raskin, Manny’s fourth-generation owner. “I think she was homesick for New York.”

Raskin, who is 41, took the reins from his father, Kenny Raskin, who turns 69 in two weeks and was on the scene Wednesday despite his retirement, in a button-down with a “Manny’s” patch on the breast. Kenny’s dad was named “Manny,” and when Kenny’s grandfather started the business in 1942, taking over a restaurant called “Sunny’s,” it was cheapest, the legend goes, to change just two letters in the sign.

Kenny Raskin started working in the deli in the summer of 1965, as it was moving to its current location west of Chicago’s Loop, unpacking boxes of used dishes — “we couldn’t afford new” — and then wiping down trays during the lunch rush.

“My grandfather was going to pay me a penny a tray,” the elder Raskin recalled. “Then when I told him the count, he cut me down to half a cent. We were busy.”

These days, they wash the trays in a conveyor dishwasher.

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Kenny said he “thought I’d croak behind the line some day,” but he was able to retire four years ago because Danny, the second of his four children, “loved the business.” Danny wanted to start working full-time at the deli after high school, but Kenny made him get a degree — at Bradley University — because he had only gone to college for two years.

“I didn’t want him to have any regrets,” said Kenny, who now has 11 grandchildren, three of them from Danny. “I wanted him to have every option open to him.”

The convention is a mixed blessing for a place like Manny’s, which has been named among the best Jewish delis in the U.S. by both the Huffington Post and the Nosher , and featured in recent days by Politico (“ Where everyone who’s anyone is eating in Chicago ”) and Chicago Eater (“ Where Politicians Eat in Chicago ”).

They’ve had one or two private events booked each day since Friday. But the regulars are sparse, part of a general emptiness felt across the city this week as residents worry about traffic, security and protests around the convention. The elder Raskin said it took him only 30 minutes to drive in from his suburban home Wednesday, versus an hour and 15 minutes on a normal weekday.

“We do have some regular people, but there’s a ton of people from the DNC who wanted to stop in and see what it’s about,” Danny Raskin said. “People come here for the diversity. They come here for the comfort. Whether you’re Jewish or not, a lot of people identify with Jewish deli.”

Like other delis, they have adjusted a bit to the food fads of the times, taking some particularly heavy items like stuffed veal, fried herring and bologna and beans off the menu. But they’ve also watched shtetl favorites like short ribs and oxtail stew get more popular on the cafeteria line as five-star chefs feature them on their own menus.

“Kishke and knishes have actually started to come back a bit more,” Danny Raskin said.

Axelrod, who helped save the place during the COVID pandemic in 2020,  is like a member of the family. He has brought Obama here numerous times, along with former President Bill Clinton, mayors of Chicago, governors of Illinois, campaigners of all kinds and uncountable numbers of journalists like me.

Though not, yet, Harris and her Jewish husband, Doug Emhoff. “It’s a good project to work on,” he said.

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