A political career of a lifetime for former political campaign manager David Wilhelm began in the sixth grade with a safety-patrol strike.
“We were upset over the hours that the safety patrol was given, and we struck,” said Wilhelm, who attended East Elementary. “I led this strike, and the administration responded by putting the fourth graders at key intersections, which failed completely; we ended up negotiating better hours. We were missing key playtime after work for no good reason — the hours were much too long.”
Since then, Wilhelm ran former President Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, was the chairman of the Democratic National Committee between 1993 and 1994 and is now a visiting professor at the Ohio University Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs. He is also involved in solar energy projects in Ohio.
One man who had a deep impact on Wilhelm’s life was his now-retired Athens High School social studies teacher and friend, Pete Lalich.
“(Wilhelm) had an extraordinary ability at a very young age in terms of politics,” Lalich said. “I noticed it in the classroom right away.”
Lalich decided to have Wilhelm run his campaign for Athens City Council while he was still in high school.
In 1975, when Wilhelm was attending OU, Lalich became interested in a presidential candidate from Georgia named Jimmy Carter, who was relatively unknown at the time.
“I took him to a meeting, where we had all seven or eight people in the state of Ohio who were for Jimmy Carter,” Lalich said. “I was the only elected official as a City Council person. Before it was all done, they made David the field coordinator.”
Wilhelm was only 19 years old at the time.
After attending graduate school at Harvard University, Wilhelm continued to run political campaigns.
“I sort of rose through a series of dismissals to become the campaign director for the 1984 U.S. Senate campaign for Paul Simon,” Wilhelm said. “We won by about two votes. If that election goes a different way, it wouldn’t have been the career boost that it turned out to be.”
After running the Iowa campaign for Joe Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign, Wilhelm was offered yet another opportunity: running the Chicago mayoral campaign for Richard M. Daley.
Friends of the Daley family then introduced Wilhelm to then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and his advisers.
“I went down and interviewed for the position,” Wilhelm said. “The chairman of the committee was Eli Segal, who looked at my resumé and saw Ohio University and Athens, Ohio, and he asked me, ‘Do you know the Dairy Barn?’
Ironically enough, Segal was the publisher of Games magazine, which had held its jigsaw puzzle contest at the Dairy Barn for 10 years prior, Wilhelm said.
“We had the greatest talk,” Wilhelm said. “Anyway, I went home to my wife and said, ‘I’m going to get this job, for the damndest reason, but I’m going to get it.’ Athens definitely played a role in all of that.”
At the present day, Wilhelm is currently working on a solar energy project through New Harvest Ventures called Turning Point Solar, which could bring hundreds of jobs as well as clean energy to Southeast Ohio.
Wilhelm’s connections at American Electric Power are ready and willing to put $20 million into the project, he said.
Through his public and private endeavors, Wilhelm has left marks all around him.
“David is so well-liked by so many people, has so many connections and is wildly connected,” said Mark Weinberg, professor and director of the Voinovich School.
For Wilhelm, it was living in Athens that led to running Lalich’s campaign and the rest of his robust political career.
“Growing up in Appalachian Ohio has influenced pretty much everything I’ve done in life,” Wilhelm said.
as299810@ohiou.edu
