Barack obama

CHAPTER 11:

Barack Obama continued to work hard for the Illinois State Senate. In 2004, a Republican, Peter Fitzgerald, was coming to the end of his six-year term as one of Illinois` two senators in the U.S. Senate. Many Illinois Republicans thought that Fitzgerald had not done a good job in the U.S. Senate. Obama saw his chance and started to make plans to win Fitzgerald`s seat in the U.S Senate.

    Campaigning throughout the whole state of Illinois for a seat in the U.S. Senate would be expensive and difficult. Obama spoke to a political consultant, David Axelrod, and asked for his help. David agreed to work with Obama and he announced that he was a Democratic candidate for the primary election which would take place in March 2004.

There was still the problem of finding the millions of dollars that the campaign would cost. Obama had to start making telephone calls and asking people for donations. As the months passed, more and more people started to talk about Barack Obama and the money started to appear.

  Barack began the hard work of campaigning. He travelled the state of Illinois giving lots of speeches. Axelrod worked with him to make his speeches more personal; he had to explain his opinions on the important problems at that time.

  The primary took place on March 14. Obama had won a huge numbers of votes in Chicago`s black neighborhoods, but he also won in every white neighborhood in Chicago. But Obama had more hard work ahead. This had only been the primary. The general election was going to take place in November 2004.

  Obama worked harder and harder. By now Barack Obama and his race for the Illinois U.S. Senate seat were getting a lot of attention from the national media and from the people in the Democratic Party at national level. Democrats could see that Obama was going to be a big star in their party.

  The Democratic National Convention was going to take place in Boston in July. At that convention, the members of the Democratic Party had to choose a candidate to run against the Republican Party`s candidate, George Bush Jr, in the presidential election. Barack was asked to speak at the convention, and for him this was a big honor.

  He knew that all his hopes and ambitions depended on this one speech. He began his keynote speech explaining who he was and where his ancestors had come from. Then, he spoke of the power in the American Dream to bring together the people in the United States. Obama then finished his speech by making some positive comments about John Kerry, who was elected to be the Democratic Party`s presidential candidate at the end of the convention.

  When Obama began his speech, many people in the audience were not listening. When he end his speech, everyone in the building was standing, cheering and some were even crying.  Even before he left the room everyone was talking about him.

  Finally, Obama won the election with 70 percent of the votes.

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