Biography:

Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, where his American mother and Kenyan father met while students at the University of Hawaii. His father returned to Kenya, where he became an official in the economics ministry, when Obama was 2.

He graduated from Columbia University in New York, and received his law degree from Harvard Law School. He became the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.

Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago and led a voter registration drive to help Bill Clinton. Obama is a senior instructor in constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School and represents a South Side district in the Illinois Senate, where he is chairman of the Public Health and Welfare Committee.

He and his wife Michelle have two daughters.

Past Campaigns:

Barack Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996. He faced no Republican opposition.

He challenged U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush for the Democratic nomination for Congress in 2000, but finished with just 31 percent of the vote to Rush's 61 percent.

Rush supported Blair Hull in the 2004 Democratic Senate primary, but quickly closed ranks with Obama after his sweeping victory over six opponents.

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