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Barack Obama
United States Senator
from Illinois
Incumbent
Assumed office
January 4 2005Serving with Richard Durbin
Preceded byPeter Fitzgerald
Member of the Illinois Senate
from the 13
This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Barack Obama article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
Article policies
district
In office
January 8, 1997 – November 4, 2004
Preceded byAlice J. Palmer
Succeeded byKwame Raoul
Personal details
Born (1961-08-04) August 4, 1961 (age 63)
Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.
Political partyDemocratic
SpouseMichelle Obama (m. 1992)
ChildrenMalia Ann (b. 1998),
Natasha ("Sasha") (b. 2001)
Residence(s)(Kenwood), Chicago, Illinois
Alma materOccidental College,
Columbia University,
Harvard Law School
ProfessionAttorney
Signature
WebsiteBarack Obama - U.S. Senator for Illinois

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This article is part of
a series aboutBarack Obama
Personal
Illinois State Senator and U.S. Senator from Illinois
44th President of the United States
Tenure
Policies
Appointments
Presidential campaigns
Seal of the President of the United States

Template:FixHTML Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (pronunciation: ; born August 4 1961) is the junior United States Senator from Illinois and the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2008 presidential election. He is the first African American to be the presumptive presidential nominee of any major American political party.

A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, Obama worked as a community organizer, university professor, political activist, and lawyer before serving in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003. After winning a landslide primary victory in March 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2004 with 70% of the vote.

As a member of the Democratic minority in the 109th Congress, he cosponsored legislation to control conventional weapons and to promote greater public accountability in the use of federal funds. He also made official trips to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In the current 110th Congress, he has sponsored legislation regarding lobbying and electoral fraud, climate change, nuclear terrorism, and care for returned U.S. military personnel. Since announcing his presidential campaign in February 2007, Obama has emphasized ending the Iraq war, increasing energy independence, decreasing the influence of lobbyists, and providing universal health care as top national priorities.

Early life and career

Main article: Early life and career of Barack Obama

Obama was born on August 4 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Obama, Sr., of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham, of Wichita, Kansas, who was largely descended from pre-revolutionary British settlers to the United States, although her great-great-grandfather Falmouth Kearney emigrated from Ireland in the mid 19th century. His parents met while both were attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where his father was enrolled as a foreign student. They separated when he was two years old and later divorced. After her divorce, Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, and the family moved to Soetoro's home country of Indonesia in 1967, where Obama attended local schools in Jakarta until he was ten years old. He then returned to Honolulu to live with his maternal grandparents while attending Punahou School from the fifth grade until his graduation from high school in 1979.

Following high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he studied at Occidental College for two years. He then transferred to Columbia University in New York City, where he majored in political science with a specialization in international relations. Obama graduated with a B.A. from Columbia in 1983, then worked at Business International Corporation and New York Public Interest Research Group.

After four years in New York City, Obama moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer for three years from June 1985 to May 1988 as director of the Developing Communities Project (DCP), a church-based community organization originally comprised of eight Catholic parishes in Greater Roseland (Roseland, West Pullman, and Riverdale) on Chicago's far South Side. During his three years as the DCP's director, its staff grew from 1 to 13 and its annual budget grew from $70,000 to $400,000, with accomplishments including helping set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens. Obama also worked as a consultant and instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, a community organizing institute. In summer 1988, he traveled for the first time to Europe for three weeks then Kenya for five weeks where he met many of his Kenyan relatives for the first time.

He entered Harvard Law School in 1988. His election in 1990 as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review was widely reported. Obama graduated with a J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard in 1991, then returned to Chicago and began writing his first book, Dreams from My Father, a memoir published in 1995.

Obama directed Illinois Project Vote! from April to October 1992, a voter registration drive with a staff of 10 and 700 volunteers that achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, leading Crain's Chicago Business to name Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.

Obama worked as an associate attorney with Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland from 1993 to 2002. After 1996, he worked at the firm only during the summer, when the Illinois Senate was not in session. Obama worked on cases where the firm represented community organizers, pursued discrimination claims, and on voting rights cases. He also spent time on real estate transactions, filing incorporation papers and defending clients against minor lawsuits. Mostly he drew up briefs, contracts, and other legal documents as a junior associate on legal teams. Obama taught constitutional law part-time at the University of Chicago Law School from 1993 until his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004.

Obama was a founding member of the board of directors of Public Allies in 1992, resigning before his wife, Michelle, became the founding executive director of Public Allies Chicago in spring 1993. He served on the board of directors of the Woods Fund of Chicago, which in 1985 had been the first foundation to fund Obama's DCP, from 1993–2002, and served on the board of directors of The Joyce Foundation from 1994–2002. Obama served on the board of directors of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge from 1995–2002, as founding president and chairman of the board of directors from 1995–1999. He also served on the board of directors of the Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the Center for Neighborhood Technology, and the Lugenia Burns Hope Center.

State legislature

Main article: Illinois Senate career of Barack Obama

Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from the 13th District, which then spanned Chicago South Side neighborhoods from Hyde Park-Kenwood south to South Shore and west to Chicago Lawn. Once elected, Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws. He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare. In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan's payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures, and in 2003, Obama sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations.

Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, and again in 2002. In 2000, he lost a Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives to four-term incumbent Bobby Rush by a margin of two to one.

In January 2003, Obama became chairman of the Illinois Senate's Health and Human Services Committee when Democrats, after a decade in the minority, regained a majority. During his 2004 general election campaign for U.S. Senate, police representatives credited Obama for his active engagement with police organizations in enacting death penalty reforms. Obama resigned from the Illinois Senate in November 2004 following his election to the US Senate.

U.S. Senate campaign

See also: United States Senate election in Illinois, 2004

In mid-2002, Obama began considering a run for the U.S. Senate, enlisting political strategist David Axelrod that fall and formally announcing his candidacy in January 2003. Decisions by Republican incumbent Peter Fitzgerald and his Democratic predecessor Carol Moseley Braun not to contest the race launched wide-open Democratic and Republican primary contests involving fifteen candidates. Obama's candidacy was boosted by Axelrod's advertising campaign featuring images of the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and an endorsement by the daughter of the late Paul Simon, former U.S. Senator for Illinois. He received over 52% of the vote in the March 2004 primary, emerging 29% ahead of his nearest Democratic rival.

Obama's expected opponent in the general election, Republican primary winner Jack Ryan, withdrew from the race in June 2004.

In July 2004, Obama wrote and delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts. After describing his maternal grandfather's experiences as a World War II veteran and a beneficiary of the New Deal's FHA and G.I. Bill programs, Obama spoke about changing the U.S. government's economic and social priorities. He questioned the Bush administration's management of the Iraq War and highlighted America's obligations to its soldiers. Drawing examples from U.S. history, he criticized heavily-partisan views of the electorate and asked Americans to find unity in diversity, saying, "There is not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America." Broadcasts of the speech by major news organizations launched Obama's status as a national political figure and boosted his campaign for U.S. Senate.

In August 2004, with less than three months to go before Election Day, Alan Keyes accepted the Illinois Republican Party's nomination to replace Ryan. A long-time resident of Maryland, Keyes established legal residency in Illinois with the nomination. In the November 2004 general election, Obama received 70% of the vote to Keyes's 27%, the largest victory margin for a statewide race in Illinois history.

U.S. Senate career

Main article: United States Senate career of Barack Obama

Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 4 2005. Though a newcomer to Washington, he recruited a team of established, high-level advisers devoted to broad themes that exceeded the usual requirements of an incoming first-term senator. He hired Pete Rouse, a 30-year veteran of national politics and former chief of staff to Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle, as his chief of staff, and economist Karen Kornbluh, former deputy chief of staff to Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, as his policy director. He recruited Samantha Power, author on human rights and genocide, and former Clinton administration officials Anthony Lake and Susan Rice as foreign policy advisers.

The Senate historian lists Obama as the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history, and the third to have been popularly elected. He is the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus. CQ Weekly, a nonpartisan publication, characterized him as a "loyal Democrat" based on analysis of all Senate votes in 2005–2007, and the National Journal ranked him as the "most liberal" senator based on an assessment of selected votes during 2007. Asked about the Journal's characterization of his voting record, Obama expressed doubts about the survey's methodology, blaming "old politics" labeling of political positions as "conservative" or "liberal" for creating predispositions that prevent problem-solving.

Legislation

Consistent with his interests in conservation, Obama voted in favor of the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Obama took an active role in the Senate's drive for improved border security and immigration reform. In 2005, he cosponsored the "Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act" introduced by Republican John McCain of Arizona. He later added three amendments to the "Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act", which passed the Senate in May 2006, but failed to gain majority support in the House of Representatives. In September 2006, Obama supported a related bill, the Secure Fence Act, authorizing construction of fencing and other security improvements along the United States–Mexico border. President Bush signed the Secure Fence Act into law in October 2006, calling it "an important step toward immigration reform."

[[Image:Coburn and Obama discuss S. 2590.jpg|thumb|right|Senate bill sponsors Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Obama discussing the Coburn–Obama Transparency Act<ref>{{cite web | title=President Bush Signs Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act | date=September 26 2006 | url=http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/09/20060926.html |

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  45. For details about the speech's genesis and delivery, see: Boss-Bicak, Shira (January 2005). "Barack Obama '83: Is He the New Face of The Democratic Party?". Columbia College Today. Retrieved 2008-04-13. See also: Bernstein, David (June 2007). "The Speech". Chicago Magazine. Retrieved 2008-04-13.
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  56. "Member Info". Congressional Black Caucus. Retrieved 2008-04-27. See also: Zeleny, Jeff (June 26 2005). "When It Comes to Race, Obama Makes His Point—With Subtlety". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 2008-04-27. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  57. Nather, David (January 14 2008). "The Space Between Clinton and Obama". CQ Weekly. Retrieved 2008-04-27. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) See also: Curry, Tom (February 21 2008). "What Obama's Senate Votes Reveal". MSNBC. Retrieved 2008-04-27. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  58. "Obama: Most Liberal Senator In 2007". National Journal. January 31 2008. Retrieved 2008-04-27. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  59. "Obama Interview" (transcript). WJLA-TV. Politico. February 12 2008. Retrieved 2008-04-27. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) See also: Toner, Robin (March 23 2008). "Obama's Promise of a New Majority". International Herald Tribune. also NYT version (published 2008-03-25). Retrieved 2008-04-30. {{cite news}}: Check |first= value (help); Check date values in: |date= (help); External link in |publisher= (help)
  60. U.S. Senate, 109th Congress, 1st Session (May 12 2005). "S. 1033, Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act". Thomas. Retrieved 2008-04-27. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  61. "Immigration Bill Divides House, Senate". USA Today. September 22 2006. Retrieved 2008-04-27. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) See also: "Obama Statement on Senate Passage of Immigration Reform Bill". Barack Obama U.S. Senate Office. May 25 2006. Retrieved 2008-04-27. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  62. "Latinos Upset Obama Voted for Border Fence". CBS 2 (Chicago). November 20 2006. Retrieved 2008-04-27. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  63. "President Bush Signs Secure Fence Act". White House. October 26 2006. Retrieved 2008-04-27. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
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