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| Barack Obama and Me |
| 2008-03-18 |
| Then, in 2002, dissatisfaction with President Bush and Republicans on the national and local levels led to a Democratic sweep of nearly every lever of Illinois state government. For the first time in 26 years, Illinois Democrats controlled the governor's office as well as both legislative chambers. The white, race-baiting, hard-right Republican Illinois Senate Majority Leader James "Pate" Philip was replaced by Emil Jones Jr., a gravel-voiced, dark-skinned African-American known for chain-smoking cigarettes on the Senate floor. Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for three decades. He represented a district on the Chicago South Side not far from Obama's. He became Obama's Âkingmaker. Several months before Obama announced his U.S. Senate bid, Jones called his old friend Cliff Kelley, a former Chicago alderman who now hosts the city's most popular black call-in radio Âprogram. I called Kelley last week and he recollected the private conversation as follows: "He said, 'Cliff, I'm gonna make me a U.S. Senator.'" "Oh, you are? Who might that be?" "Barack Obama." Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills. "I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen," State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit." |
| Posted by:Nimble Spemble |
| #1 "Pate" Philips is not a race baiter. He is a jerk of the highest degree but all his jerkness revolved around money and favors - one could say he was a democrat machine pol wearing Republican colors. |
| Posted by: 3dc 2008-03-18 12:10 |