He has long been a business professor at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.
[1] During the presidencies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, he worked an assistant to three different directors of the Office of Management and Budget.
[1][4][6][11] Haider served as deputy assistant secretary of the United States Treasury.
[1][4] Haider, in 2008, served on the president of the Cook County Board of Commissioners' task force on property tax classification.
[12] Haider served as an alternate delegate to the 2012 Republican National Convention, pledged to Mitt Romney.
[14][15][16] Haider had, previous to running for the Republican Party's mayoral nomination, been a Democrat.
[17] Ahead of the primary, Haider was endorsed by the city's Republican Party organization on December 4, 1986.
[15] The search committee to find a candidate for the Republican Party to endorse had been chaired by Dan K.
[19] They hoped that a strong performance by Haider would assist the party in getting a Republican affiliated candidate elected Chicago alderman for the first time in twelve years.
[19] Part of this was attributed to there being two other white challengers against Harold Washington, Edward Vrdolyak and Thomas Hynes.
[19] He also lagged in fundraising, with those opposed to Washington donating mostly to the other two challengers' campaigns, and with Republican Party members more focused on donating to presidential campaigns, as the race for the 1984 Republican Party presidential primaries had already begun.
[19] Hynes withdrew from the race just before the general election, but this did not help Haider's performance.
During the campaign, in a desperate bid for press, Haider rode an elephant (an animal often used to symbolize the Republican Party) down State Street.