Don Rose is an independent political consultant heading Don Rose Communications and The Urban Political Group. The firms offer campaign consulting and management services including strategic message development and media production to candidates of both parties as well as independents. Based in Chicago the firms have operated in 13 states. Clientele has included Chicago Mayors Harold Washington and Jane Byrne, Illinois Senator Paul Simon, Supreme Court Justice Seymour Simon, Governor Jim Edgar, former State's Attorney Bernard Carey and numerous congressmen, state and municipal legislators, including Senator Carol Moseley Braun in her early career as a state representative. The firm has also consulted for governmental agencies such as the Illinois Housing Development Authority and the Illinois Law Enforcement Commission.

Rose has published widely on political and cultural affairs, appearing in Social Policy, The Nation, George, Selling Magazine, Seven Days Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Atlanta Constitution, Chicago Sun-Times, Tribune, Chicago Magazine, Chicago Reader and the Journal of the Illinois Political Science Association. He has contributed chapters to several books, including 20th Century Chicago: 100 years, 100 Voices; Sweet Home Chicago;The Making of the Mayor 1983 and Restoration: 1989. He has lectured at Harvard, the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Northwestern University, Loyola of Chicago and other schools and colleges.

He has been an on-air commentator for WLS-TV (ABC), hosted a weekly community-affairs talk show for 22 years on WPNT-FM and its predecessor stations and was editor and co-publisher of the monthly Hyde Park-Kenwood Voices. He is a frequent guest on network as well as local television and radio programs.

During the 1960s he was active in the civilrights movement, acting as a midwest-states organizer for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and later served as press secretary to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during his Chicago campaign. In 1968 he was an organizer for the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. In 1980 he was an organizer of the short-lived Citizens Party and was political director in l992 of the National Committee to Draft Mario Cuomo for President. He is a founding member of Chicagoans Against the War in Iraq, organized a year before the war’s outbreak (now known as Chicagoans Against War and Injustice).

Rose also has had a continuing ancillary career as a food and travel writer, publishing a weekly dining-out column in the Sun-Times for 16 years and comments frequently on jazz and the arts.

Don Rose Communications / 2025 North Sedgwick Street / Chicago, Illinois 60614
Phone 773-935-3432 / Fax 773-935-4193 / E-mail Donrose65@aol.com