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When Reggie Love was asked to swap his job in then-senator Barack Obama’s Chicago mailroom for a gig on the candidate’s presidential campaign five years ago, there was no contract or job description — not even a loosely defined one.

“Take care of stuff,” Mr. Obama’s chief of staff put it to him at the time.

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Pete Rouse, who is today a counselor to the president, had been impressed by Mr. Love’s gumption in devising a way to open and respond to constituents’ mail using digital technology.

If he could take such a thankless task so seriously — if he could take the initiative in something as unsexy as mail — perhaps he was just the person for “the job.”

“The job was, ‘How can I make it easier for [Mr. Obama] to run for president?’ ” Mr. Love said in an exclusive sit-down interview with the National Post.

“It was basically, ‘We’ll see if he likes you and if you like him. And if he doesn’t kill you and you don’t want to quit, then you can stay on,’”

added the North Carolina native, who was in Toronto this week to deliver the keynote speech at an Urban Financial Services Coalition event.