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A Democrat in demand

Barack Obama, the freshman senator from Illinois, brings his star power to Orlando Saturday to stump for Florida Democrats.

By WES ALLISON
Published December 9, 2005

[Getty Images]

Sen. Barack Obama talks to U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, right, at a presentation ceremony for the 2005 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award on Capitol Hill in November.

WASHINGTON - Last year, Barack Obama introduced himself to America as the "skinny kid with the funny name," electrified the Democratic National Convention in Boston, and won election to the U.S. Senate in a landslide, becoming only the third black senator since Reconstruction.

Then he quietly started work at the U.S. Capitol and, for many Americans, all but disappeared.

Obama, D-Ill., who is scheduled to speak to Florida Democrats Saturday night in Orlando, has spent most of his first year as a U.S. senator gamely playing the role of a freshman - learning the job, tending the home-state hearth and a few pet issues, and making friends in this most exclusive of clubs.

But at another level, where Democrats plot and raise money for next year's assault on the Republican majority in Congress, Obama remains the brightest of stars, a popular draw at political fund-raisers and the type person who gives Democrats hope when they look to the future.

"On the political side, he's everywhere," said Jennifer Duffy, the editor at Cook Political Report who has followed the Senate for 18 years. "He is the most in-demand congressional Democrat I can think of."

It is rare to find a freshman lawmaker who's as big a draw to other politicians. Before last month's elections, Obama spent one weekend campaigning with Tim Kaine and another with Sen. Jon Corzine, the Democratic candidates for governor in Virginia and New Jersey, respectively. Both won.

In September, Barack gave the keynote speech at a Philadelphia luncheon for Bob Casey, a Democrat who is challenging Republican Sen. Rick Santorum. The event netted $500,000 for Casey's campaign - an enormous sum for a Senate fund-raiser.

Meanwhile, Obama has launched his own political action committee, the Hope Fund PAC, as he builds a national fund-raising network from New York to Hollywood.

The PAC already has raised more than $850,000 for the 2006 races, and Obama has given liberally to his peers up for re-election, as well as to Democratic challengers for Republican-held seats.

This includes $4,200 to Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who likely will face Republican Rep. Katherine Harris, R-Sarasota, in November, and $2,100 to state Sen. Les Miller, D-Tampa, who is running for Congress.

In July, Obama joined Nelson at a town hall meeting in Eatonville, near Orlando, the nation's first incorporated black town. The event drew 1,000 to the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church.

"He is a rock star in terms of political attractiveness, as people are very interested in this fellow, because he was such a splash (in Boston), and now he has continued," said Nelson, who invited Obama to speak in Orlando Saturday. "People see there's a lot of substance."

Obama, 44, is tall, slim and engaging, with a ready smile, a quick handshake and, like most politicians, a gift for matching names with faces. Ask female staffers on Capitol Hill about him, and you'll often hear words like "hottie."

He has benefited greatly from being a charismatic orator in a Democratic Party hungry for stars - especially those who may appeal to independent swing voters, as he has done in Illinois.

He's a social liberal, an advocate of equal opportunity and helping the poor. He is also religious, talking about the role of faith in his life, and believes the Democratic Party can do more to reach out to voters who may not normally vote Democrat, analysts say.

As a senator, he's focused on issues with little ideological friction - improving energy efficiency, preparing for an outbreak of avian flu, expanding Pell Grants for college scholarships, paying for food and phone calls for soldiers recuperating from wounds suffered in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He also offers a compelling personal story, and Obama's 1995 biography, Dreams From My Father, became a best-seller when it was re-released last year.

Obama is the son of a black Kenyan immigrant and a white woman who met in Hawaii. When he was two, his father, Barack Obama Sr., went to Harvard and returned to Kenya, where he was a politician. He died in a car accident in 1982, and Obama remembers meeting him only once, at age 10, according to the Almanac of American Politics.

Obama earned a degree in political science at Columbia University in New York, then went to work as a community organizer for a church in Chicago. A few years later he enrolled at Harvard Law School, where he met his wife, Michelle, and became the first black editor of Harvard Law Review.

He returned to Chicago and taught law. He also became active in Democratic politics, and in 1996 he ran for an open state Senate seat representing Chicago's very Democratic South Side. He was unopposed in the Democratic primary, which made his election in the general election a cinch.

As 2004 approached, the state's sitting Republican U.S. senator, Peter Fitzgerald, decided not to seek re-election. Obama won the Democratic nomination, then his Republican opponent, Jack Ryan, quit over a sex scandal.

With little time to mount a real campaign against Obama, Illinois Republicans ran Alan Keyes, a conservative black commentator. Obama trounced him.

Thanks to his performance at the Democratic convention in Boston, as well as the national attention Ryan's downfall brought the race, Obama already was a star when he joined the Senate in January.

Once there, however, he adopted what Duffy calls the "Hillary strategy," for Hillary Clinton, the former First Lady turned Democratic U.S. senator from New York: Despite the hype of her election, she spent her first years in office avoiding the national media, focusing on local issues, and deferring to senior members.

Obama regularly yields the spotlight to Richard Durbin, a fellow Democrat and the senior senator from Illinois. Aides say he has held more than 40 town hall meetings in Illinois.

Among black officials, only Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shares his political stature. He is the only African-American senator, and he has addressed some issues dear to black leaders, such as lead poisoning and opposing a Georgia requirement that voters to show photo identification.

But he has studiously avoided being seen as the senator exclusively for African-Americans.

Dianne Pinderhughes, a professor of political science and African-American studies at the University of Illinois, said many black activists wish he would do more for their causes.

Instead he's sought a balance between pleasing his biggest supporters, in the African-Americans wards of Chicago, and those elsewhere in Illinois who voted for him but who may have other concerns.

That's a strategy that should serve him well in the long run, she said.

"If he wanted to, he could be headline news every day. But he's chosen to sit in the back," Pinderhughes said. "He's not trying to jump the queue in terms of publicity and choosing the bully pulpit, which he certainly has, to raise issues for African-Americans."

Since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in late August, Obama slowly has been raising his profile on national issues. Former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton invited him to help raise money for storm relief. Obama also criticized the Bush administration for mishandling the disaster and appeared on his first Sunday morning news show as a senator, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, where he said Katrina had highlighted inequalities of race and class.

While the administration's ineptitude was colorblind, "what I do think is that whoever was in charge of planning was so detached from the realities of inner-city life .... that they couldn't conceive of the notion that somebody couldn't load up their SUV, put $100 worth of gas in there, put some sparkling water and drive off to a hotel and check in with a credit card," Obama said.

Last month, he delivered a major address at the Council on Foreign Relations in Chicago that criticized President Bush, saying he failed to articulate a strategy for completing the mission in Iraq. Obama also called for the administration to launch a diplomatic offensive to recruit more allies for securing the peace.

The Chicago Tribune reported last month that he recently won the confidence - and a check for the Hope Fund - from super-investor Warren Buffett.

Apparently he has that effect on lots of luminaries. Campaign finance records show that aside from Buffett and his wife, Susie, other top contributors to his Hope Fund include director Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dreamworks.

And then there are the Kennedys. Ethel Kennedy, wife of the late Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, invited Obama to deliver the keynote address at a memorial marking what would have been her husband's 80th birthday last month.

Tonight, he'll court the Mouse. As keynote speaker at the Florida Democratic Party's annual conference at Disney World, party officials are counting on Obama to fire up the faithful for the upcoming political season. Nelson said he "pestered him enough" that he canceled plans in Chicago to attend.

And with only one statewide official left - Nelson - Florida Democrats can use all the star power they can get.

Born: Aug. 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii

Resides: Chicago

Occupation: Law professor, community organizer

Education: Columbia University, political science, 1983; Harvard Law School, 1991

Experience: Illinois state senator, 1996 to 2004; elected to U.S. Senate, 2004

Family: Wife, Michelle; two daughters, Melia and Sasha

Religion: United Church of Christ

On his nightstand: The March, by E.L. Doctorow

[Last modified December 9, 2005, 18:22:29]