Alert: Axelrod lecture rescheduled to 8 p.m. Oct. 9

The lecture at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln by David Axelrod, senior adviser to President Barack Obama, has been rescheduled to 8 p.m., Friday, Oct. 9.

Due to demands in Washington, D.C., and Axelrod's schedule, the event will now begin two hours later than originally planned.

The lecture will now begin 8 p.m. at the Nebraska Champions Club, 707 Stadium Drive, for the Peter J. Hoagland Integrity in Public Service Lecture Series. The lecture is free and open to the public, with a limited number of seats available on the club's main floor on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors will open at 7 p.m. The plaza/garden level area of the club has also been set up with overflow viewing of the talk on large-screen televisions. The UNL Visitors Center, 313 N. 13th St., will also have a live video/audio feed.

Audience members who do not arrive in time to have seating in the main floor of Champions Club will be directed to the garden level or to the Visitors Center.

Axelrod's lecture will also be live-streamed on the Web at www.unl.edu. In keeping with the university's practices at lectures, backpacks aren't permitted and purses are subject to search.

"My apologies for the new start time and any inconvenience this may cause for those planning to attend Friday's talk," Axelrod said. "But I am still very much looking forward to the lecture and to being in Nebraska."

"We understand the nature of the business and how demanding Mr. Axelrod's schedule is so we are grateful that he can still attend Oct. 9," said Elizabeth Theiss-Morse, chair of the Department of Political Science. The department and the College of Arts and Sciences host the event.

Prior to being named President Obama's senior adviser, Axelrod was senior adviser to the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition and senior strategist to Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency. Since 1988, Axelrod has been senior partner at the consulting firm AKP&D Message and Media in Chicago. In that capacity, he managed media strategy and communications for more than 150 local, state, and national campaigns, with a focus on progressive candidates and causes.

In 2006, Axelrod ran the independent expenditure media program for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, helping Democrats regain the majority in the House of Representatives. That same year, Axelrod served as media adviser to Deval Patrick, who was elected Massachusetts's first Democratic governor in 16 years and the state's first-ever African American governor. In 2004, when President Obama was a member of the Illinois State Senate, Axelrod helped him defeat a primary field of six other Democrats and go on to a landslide general-election win in his U.S. Senate campaign.

Before entering politics in 1984, Axelrod spent eight years as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, where he covered national, state and local politics. In 1981, he became the youngest political writer and columnist in the paper's history. He also served as the Tribune's City Hall bureau chief.

Peter Hoagland, an Omaha native for whom the lecture series is named, served as a Nebraska state senator before winning a U.S. House of Representatives seat in 1988. He served three terms before losing by less than 1 percent of the vote to John Christensen in 1994. Prior to being elected to the Nebraska Legislature in 1978, Hoagland worked with Nebraska Common Cause to write and pass into law the Nebraska Open Meetings Law. In addition, he helped to create the Political Accountability and Disclosure Committee, which regulates political activity in Nebraska. He died Oct. 30, 2007, at age 65 from complications of Parkinson's disease. The lecture series was created in 2008 by Jim Crounse, Hoagland's friend and former chief of staff, with a gift to the University of Nebraska Foundation. The lectures will occur annually and alternate between UNL and the University of Nebraska at Omaha. This is the second lecture in the series.