Karl Rove is a top adviser to President George W. Bush, but he is not widely known beyond Washington's political elite. However, more and more he is considered a major power broker, a man who has contributed greatly to the political success of many Republican candidates for public office, including President George W. Bush. Most recently, he has been credited with engineering the Republican sweep of the Senate and the House of Representatives in the mid-term election of November 2002.

Born in Colorado in 1950, Karl Rove began his career as a political kingmaker in Texas. He caught the attention of the chairman of the state Republican Party -- George Herbert Walker Bush -- in 1973 when Rove was elected chairman of the College Republicans. In 1980, Bush hired Rove to help him in his campaign for the presidency. When Ronald Reagan won the Republican nomination instead, Rove opened a consulting business, Karl Rove & Company, and managed several successful campaigns for Texas Republicans, including Bill Clements, the first Republican to become Texas governor in a century; and Phil Gramm, a Republican elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984.

Rove's political alliance with George W. Bush began in 1993, when he advised Bush in his successful bid to unseat the incumbent Democratic governor of Texas, Ann Richards. Rove's consulting firm actively assisted Bush in his 2000 presidential bid, and when Bush won, he named Rove as an adviser in his White House Office. Since then, Rove has advised the President on political strategy, with a particular expertise in deciphering and making good use of polling data.

Rove's planning for the 2002 election began almost immediately after the controversial 2000 election was settled in Bush's favor. Rove began plotting the electoral map, analyzing where Bush had done well in 2000, and identifying vulnerable Congressional seats that could be won from the Democrats. He and his staff convinced Republicans, such as Norm Coleman of Minnesota and Jim Talent of Missouri, to challenge Democratic incumbents whose victories were not assured. Perhaps most risky of all was the decision to have President Bush put his popularity on the line by campaigning strenuously for Republican candidates across the country.

In the end, the plan worked, and Karl Rove's talent as an election strategist was reaffirmed. Republicans gained control of Congress, and partisan politics was transformed as the 107th Congress convened in January 2003.