Reply #40: I found this from 2004..

[stillcool]

from the Illinois Times website: illinois.gyrosite.com
POSTED ON MARCH 11, 2004:
Head of the class

Barack Obama banks on his progressive legislative record to win a seat in the U.S. Senate. Is that enough for Illinois voters?

By Todd Spivak

Despite his weary voice, Obama began the day with an extra bounce in his step. Just weeks before the election, he suddenly became the front-runner in most statewide polls for the first time since announcing his candidacy in January 2003. The Chicago Tribune had endorsed him in that day's paper, calling him "one of the strongest Democratic candidates Illinois has seen in some time."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Obama, 42, graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he became the first African-American president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. He journeyed to Chicago as a civil-rights attorney and community activist. In 1992, during Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign, Obama was director of Illinois Project VOTE!, a massive voter-registration and education drive credited with helping elect Carol Moseley Braun to the U.S. Senate.

In 1996 Obama was elected to the state Senate, representing Chicago's 13th District. He teaches constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, and lives with his wife, Michelle, and two daughters in a high-rise building overlooking Lake Michigan just outside the U. of C. campus in Hyde Park.

Although Obama has achieved much during his tenure in Springfield, he is counting on his stellar performance in the legislative session last spring to catapult him ahead of the pack in the March 16 primary.

Obama rode a publicity wave by sponsoring such legislation as a bill banning the use of the diet supplement ephedra, which killed a Northwestern University football player, and another one preventing the use of pepper spray or pyrotechnics in nightclubs in the wake of the tragic deaths of 21 people during a stampede at the now-notorious E2 nightclub in Chicago.

Other legislation sponsored by Obama was monumental for the state and the entire country, according to one political ally, House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago. "Barack passed some particularly outstanding legislation last year that reflects his progressive values and progressive ideals," Currie says.

Obama's bill requiring police to record interrogations of homicide suspects was the first of its kind in the country. It has been hailed as the most far-reaching reform the Illinois legislature has passed in its efforts to repair a crippled criminal-justice system.

With another bill, Obama sought to combat racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of stopped motorists. In accordance with the new law, the collected data will be forwarded to the state Department of Transportation, which will analyze the information to determine whether motorists are being pulled over on the basis of race.

Other significant Obama-sponsored legislation expanded the Kid Care program to take in an additional 20,000 children who lacked health insurance, provided an estimated $26 million in tax relief to low-income families by making the state Earned Income Tax Credit refundable, and protected the state Open Meetings Act by requiring public bodies to tape closed-door meetings.
------------------------------------------------
Obama has done as well as any of the candidates to court downstate voters, according to Kent Redfield, professor of political science at University of Illinois at Springfield, who believes that the contest will be won or lost in Cook County. Unlike the 2002 election, in which Blagojevich placed third in Chicago and still managed to win the governorship, Redfield says there are "no favorite sons" in the upcoming primary.

"Downstaters look at the whole field of candidates as being from Chicago," he says. "Right now Obama has the momentum; he's getting positive press and buzz just when people are starting to focus on the race."

Local political activist Roy Williams Jr. says an Obama victory would prove that a "true grassroots" campaign can still trump big money.

"People are beginning to realize the uniqueness of this historic moment," says Williams, a Springfield coordinator for Obama. "It's not every election that you run into a guy with credentials like Barack Obama's."

http://www.illinoistimes.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3a2984