1996-2003, Illinois State Senate

1996 Election
Main article: Radical roots of Barack Hussein Obama
In 1995 a cadre of like minded individuals gathered for a fundraising event in the early career of Barack Obama hosted by Weather Underground (WUO) terrorist William “Bill” Ayers. Besides Obama, those in attendance were Ayers wife Bernardine Dohrn, and Carl Davidson, veterans of guerrilla warfare training in Cuba just prior to the 1968 Democrat National Convention riots. Ayers and Dohrn have taken credit for, and never denied, bombing the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon and the State Department.

Ayers and Dohrn used their celebrity status among leftists to launch Obama’s career. Ayers, Dohrn and Jeff Jones are authors of Prairie Fire: The Politics of Revolutionary Anti-imperialism, the title taken from The Sayings of Mao Zedong. The book declares “we are communist men and women.” Ayers later jokingly, publicly admitted to ghostwriting Obama’s book, Dreams From My Father and Obama was to appoint several openly avowed Maoists to prominent White House and Executive Branch positions.

Knocking Candidates Off the Ballot

Barack Obama ran for the Illinois state senate in 1996. He was initially supported by incumbent Alice Palmer, who declared she would run for the U.S. Congress. However, when her bid for Congress failed on November 28, 1995, she tried to run for her old seat in the March 1996 election. Her supporters asked Obama to step aside, although whether this was with her permission remains uncertain. Not only did Obama not step down, he gathered a team of high-priced lawyers, including fellow Harvard Law School graduate Thomas Johnson, to challenge his opponent’s petition signatures on technicalities after the filing deadline had passed. Such tactics are legal and frequently used in Chicago; in 2006 they eliminated 67 of the 245 aldermanic candidates; yet nevertheless led to the term “hardball” by The New York Times and “cutthroat” by David Mendel as reported by both CNN and MSNBC. The Chicago Tribune declared Obama had mastered “the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics”, noting “The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.” As one of Obama’s four opponents, eliminated through his ballot challenges, would put it:

“ “Why say you’re for a new tomorrow, then do old-style Chicago politics to remove legitimate candidates? He talks about honor and democracy, but what honor is there in getting rid of every other candidate so you can run scot-free? Why not let the people decide?”
—Gha-is Askia, 1996 Illinois Senate candidate
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Mark Ewell, another candidate, filed 1,286 signatures, and Obama’s challenges left him 86 short of the minimum requirement (757).  Ewell filed a federal lawsuit contesting the election board’s decision but Tom Johnson intervened, and Ewell’s case was dismissed just a few days later. Ewell and other Obama opponents were using early 1995 polling sheets to verify signatures of registered voters, but city authorities had just purged 15,871 unqualified people from the 13th district list, and Obama’s challenges used the more recent, updated list. Askia was left 69 signatures short of the requirement. If names were printed instead of signed in cursive, they were declared invalid. If they were good but the person registering the signatures wasn’t a registered voter (e.g. underage) they were invalid.  Palmer had according to Obama campaign consult Ronald Davis, used two children to help gather her petition signatures. To this day Palmer denies the challenges were valid, and maintains she could have overcome the objections with more time and resources.  Thanks to his lawyers, Obama would win the election without a single other candidate on the ballot.

2000 Election
Main Article: Illinois 1st congressional district election, 2000
In 2000, Obama lost his only political election when he chose to run against experienced incumbent and former Black Panther Bobby L. Rush for the U.S. Congress in a 65% black district. Rush’s name recognition began at 90%, Obama’s at 11%. Michelle Obama opposed taking on an such an iconic figure dear to the community and threatened divorce. Establishment Democrats considered Obama “a white man in blackface”. Rush said of Obama, “He went to Harvard and became an educated fool,” adding, “We’re not impressed with these folks with these eastern elite degrees.” Todd Spivak would give voice to this impression of Obama, noting that

“ “My view of Obama then wasn’t all that different from the image he projects now….One thing I can say is, I never heard him launch into the preacher-man voice he now employs during speeches. He sounded vanilla, and activists in his mostly black district often chided him for it.”

Rush would go on to win the Primary with 61.02% of the vote; Obama received 30.36%. The loss led to Obama considering dropping out of politics altogether, particularly after the September 11, 2001 attacks, since his name sounds similar to “Osama bin Laden”.

State Senate Voting Record

Obama entered the Illinois Senate promising change to a corrupt system. He mixed often radical votes with more pragmatic agreements. Possibly one of his most radical votes was against requiring medical care for aborted children who survive the procedure – in fact the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council ascribed him a 100% rating for his consistently pro-choice votes.[65] He was criticized for using the statehouse as a stepping stone for a more illustrious career: Steven J. Rauschenberger, a Republican, said prior to Obama’s election as president: “He is a very bright but very ambitious person who has always had his eyes on the prize, and it wasn’t Springfield. If he deserves to be president, it is not because he was a great legislator.”

The statehouse was majority Republican, so the Senator was sometimes forced to compromise. He formed allegiances across party lines to pass campaign finance reform that banned most gifts by lobbyists, prohibited spending campaign money for legislators’ personal use and required electronic filing of campaign disclosure reports.  Obama also helped pass a so-called “driving-while-black bill”, which required the police to collect data on the race of drivers they stopped as a way to monitor racial profiling.

Obama established himself as a chief spokesperson in opposition to the War on Terror during an October 2002 rally at Federal Plaza in Chicago organized by veteran Maoist and webmaster of Progressives for Obama,  Carl Davidson.

2003 Emil Jones Deal
Main Article: 2003 Barack Obama deal with Emil Jones
When Illinois’ U.S. Senator Peter Fitzgerald announced he would be retiring in April 2003, Obama jumped at the opportunity, declaring that he would be a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2004.   To boost his chances Obama approached the newly crowned president of the Illinois Senate, Emil Jones Jr., with a proposal. According to Jones, whom Obama has since called his “godfather” the conversation went as follows:

“ “After I was elected president, in 2003, he came to see me, a couple months later. And he said to me, he said, ‘You’re the senate president now, and with that, you have a lot of pow-er.’  And I told Barack, ‘You think I got a lot of pow-er now?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you got a lot of pow-er.’ And I said, ‘What kind of pow-er do I have?’ He said, ‘You have the pow-er to make a United States sen-a-tor!’  I said to Barack, I said, ‘That sounds good!’ I said, ‘I haven’t even thought of that.’ I said, ‘Do you have someone in mind you think I could make?,’ and he said, ‘Yeah. Me.’”

Because of the deal, Obama’s entire Illinois Senate legislative record was, as longtime Obama reporter Todd Spivak put it, built in a single year. During his 7th and final year in the Illinois Senate, Obama sponsored an incredible 26 bills into law, including many he now points to when criticized as inexperienced—as CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux observed, “With help from on high, Obama got his name on hundreds of bills that he pushed through.” Jones not only had Obama craft legislation addressing daily tragedies to raise his political profile, he also appointed Obama head of almost all high-profile legislation in the Illinois Senate, angering other state legislators with more seniority who’d spent years supporting the bills.  Illinois State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of the famous racial profiling bill requiring videotaped confessions in police interrogations, complained bitterly about Jones’ decision.   Jones’ influence had a major impact on Obama’s chances in the 2004 elections, preventing major political players from backing Obama’s opponents. To quote Emil Jones,

“ “He knew if he had me in the run for the Senate, it would put a block on the current mayor. The current mayor and the father of the controller, which was Dan Hynes, they were roommates in Springfield when the mayor was a state senator, so they had a relationship. Another big financial backer for the governor was Blair Hull. Barack knew if he had me it would checkmate the governor, ’cause the governor couldn’t come out and go with Blair Hull, ’cause the governor needs me. Same with the mayor. So he had analyzed and figured all of that out. He knew I could help him with labor support. And I could put a checkmate on some of the local politicians that didn’t know him, but they couldn’t really go against me.”
—Emil Jones[26]
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2004-2008, U.S. Senate
See also: Barack Obama:U.S. Senate (2004-2008), United States Senate election in Illinois, 2004
Senator Barack Obama
2004 Primary Election

Despite initially trailing in the polls to front runner Blair Hull, Obama greatly benefited from what the Chicago Tribune called “the most inglorious campaign implosion in Illinois political history” when pressure from journalists and opposing candidates, just weeks before the election, forced the unsealing of Hull’s messy divorce files. The files revealed Hull’s ex-wife’s accusations of verbal and physical abuse.  Hull would afterwards criticize the media, stating, “As for the press, I will never read the newspaper the same way again.” Obama would go on to win the Primary with 53% of the vote. Obama’s unexpected victory led to him being termed a “rising star” by the media.

2004 General Election, Jack Ryan

Once again Obama found himself trailing to popular front runner Jack Ryan, and once again a candidate’s campaign imploded thanks to media intervention. In an unprecedented move, the Chicago Tribune and local TV station WLS sued to force the unsealing of Ryan’s divorce files, despite opposition from both Ryan and his wife, Jeri Ryan, who in the files accused Jack Ryan of trying to coerce her to perform sex acts in public. Though Ryan advisors told him he could still win if using a negative attack on Obama, Ryan refused to engage in what he considered dirty politics.  Ryan then dropped out of the race (per request by the Illinois GOP, following which the Illinois GOP scrambled to find a replacement, leaving Obama uncontested for weeks to campaign and build up public support. On top of all this, Obama was selected to give the keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (July 27, catapulting him into the national spotlight, and leading to further media publicity terming him a “rising star.”

2004 General Election, Alan Keyes
Main Article: Obama born alive controversy
After a number of candidates including former Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka declined to run, the Illinois GOP finally settled on fiery Alan Keyes, a former Ambassador to the Economic and Social Counsel of the United Nations, with less than 3 months left before the November 2004 election.  His sudden entrance into the state for the election was initially attacked in the press as “carpetbagging” Keyes repeatedly claimed his primary motivation for entering a race he had seemingly no chance of winning was his disgust at Obama’s votes on the popular Born Alive bills.   Keyes, from his first day of arriving in Illinois (August 9, 2004), accused Obama of having voted against bills mandating medical care for newborn children, and supporting “infanticide” (the term twice used in the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act  where hospitals left newborn infants to die like garbage. Obama in a debate on October 13, 2004, defended himself against Keyes’ accusations of infanticide by claiming that Illinois law was already sufficient.

However, Keyes’ rhetoric, calling Obama’s votes “the slaveholder’s position” and saying “Jesus Christ would not vote for Obama” was widely ridiculed by the press. Keyes’ unabashed criticism of homosexuality as “selfish hedonism” was also targeted.   Obama would ultimately win the election, 70% to 27%.

U.S. Senate Voting Record

Obama’s incomplete term in the U.S. Senate was largely not noteworthy. In voting against raising the debt limit in 2006 Obama famously said, “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. … I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”   In 2008 as candidate for president Obama called George W. Bush’s request to raise the debt limit “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic”

The National Journal ranked him the most liberal senator in 2007.

Obama frequently used the filibuster to obstruct the operations of government, and voted against the minimum wage bill he introduced because it included a provision to pay active duty U.S. troops. He voted for the $700 billion TARP program to bailout the big banks after receiving more than $120,000 in contributions from Fannie Mae, a government sponsored entity taken into conservatorship for mismanaging its affairs and responsible for all the big banks’ problems.

According to Opensecrets.org, of the 671,269 contributions to Obama during his time in the Senate, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley were among the top 20 biggest money donors to his campaigns.  All four subsequently received approximately $70 billion in taxpayer assisted bailout money from the TARP program he voted for.  UBS AG, a foreign bank and the 12th largest donor to Obama, was fined $780 billion in February 2009 in a U.S. Federal Court on charges it helped thousands of Americans evade taxes.

2008 Presidential Election
Main article: Barack Hussein Obama 2008 Presidential campaign
Unlike Democrat contenders Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, Obama’s hands were not “stained” with the Iraqi war resolution; a number of Democrats wanted to punish candidates for acting bi-partisan and called for his candidacy. His only career accomplishment til then had been the delivery of a speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.

Former Democrat Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman endorsed Obama’s opponent John McCain in 2008 and declined to endorse Obama for the 2012 presidential election.

Primary Election

In 2007-08, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton competed for the Democrat nomination. Hillary Clinton cleverly resurrected the “Born Alive” controversy surrounding Obama that had lain largely dormant since 2004 (notwithstanding the continuing mentions by Jill Stanek), by accusing Obama of not being pro-choice for voting “Present” on a number of abortion-related bills[100]—including the Born Alive ones,[101] and cowardly ducking the votes.[102] This led to criticism of Obama by two pro-choice organizations, Emily’s List, and the National Organization for Women.   However, Pam Sutherland, the long-time head of Illinois Planned Parenthood, came to Obama’s aid, criticizing Clinton for making the attack, and stating repeatedly that Obama’s present votes were part of a broader strategy used by Planned Parenthood to keep Illinois voters from knowing their state senators were voting against the controversial and popular bills.

“ “He came to me and said: ‘My members are being attacked. We need to figure out a way to protect members and to protect women. A ‘present’ vote was hard to pigeonhole which is exactly what Obama wanted. What it did was give cover to moderate Democrats who wanted to vote with us but were afraid to do so” because of how their votes would be used against them electorally. A ‘present’ vote would protect them. Your senator voted ‘present.’ Most of the electorate is not going to know what that means.”
-Pam Sutherland, President/CEO of Illinois Planned Parenthood Council, 1980-2012[106]
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As the contest in Iowa drew near and the former First Lady’s inevitability was being usurped by a challenger, Hillary Clinton organizers began circulating rumors that Obama was secretly a Muslim.   Clinton also made the claim repeatedly that while Obama was leading in Delegates she was winning the Popular Vote, though this was in part because Obama hadn’t been registered in Michigan.  Obama’s advantage with super-delegates over Clinton was about 2-to-1.  Obama was able to attract the support of liberals by pointing out that he had come out against the Iraq War “from the beginning” whereas Clinton had voted in favor of the war in 2002.   On June 7, 2008, Hillary Clinton withdrew from the Primaries, conceding the race and endorsing her opponent, when Obama passed the 2,118 Delegates required; winning 2,201 delegates to Clinton’s 1,896.
Born Alive Record Resurfaces

On June 30, 2008, Obama’s voting record on the “Born Alive” bills came once more to the forefront when CNN gave voice to the growing controversy and revealed the defense Obama had been using since 2004-2008, that the Illinois bills he’d voted against were different from the federal bill, was false, since he’d brought up for a vote a bill word for word identical to the federal bill in the Health and Human Services Committee he chaired, and voted against it, defeating it.  This led in August to a confrontation between Obama and the NRLC.   After Obama accused critics of ‘lying’ the NRLC challenged the assertion, and the Obama campaign conceded he “misspoke” and had voted against an identical bill to the “federal bill that everybody supported” but focused on Obama’s new claim, that Illinois law was already sufficient to protect newborn children.  The NRLC promptly declared “Senator Barack Obama’s four-year effort to cover up his full role in killing legislation to protect born-alive survivors of abortions continues to unravel.”

Jeremiah Wright
See also: Barack Obama and Liberation Theology
One major dilemma that arose for Obama during his campaign was his connection to his preacher Jeremiah Wright. Obama and his wife (raised a Baptist) were members of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, a church that embraced black liberation theology and its emphasis on empowering so-called “oppressed groups” against “establishment forces”. This denomination was the first in America to ordain gays as ministers.  Church pastor Jeremiah Wright had been making inflammatory comments and posting his sermons online for sale. These include the statement “G-d damn America,” and in describing the September 11th attacks, “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought right back to our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.”   In addition, Rev. Wright blamed America saying “We supported Zionism shamelessly while ignoring the Palestinians and branding anybody who spoke out against it as being anti-Semitic.”

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