Obama got start in civil rights practice
Boston Globe - Boston,MA,USA
This photo provided by Harvard University Law School shows Barack Obama as a student at the school in Cambridge, Mass., Feb. 6, 1990. …

Obama’s new breed of baby boomer
Boston Globe - Boston,MA,USA
Senator Barack Obama, shown in Las Vegas on Sunday, grew up in the aftermath of the huge cultural storm of the 1960s….

The Hot Ticket in Hollywood: An Evening With Obama
New York Times - New York,NY,USA
Barack Obama was greeted during a rally on Sunday in Las Vegas. Mr. Obama will be the guest of honor at a celebrity-studded benefit tonight. …

Authentic Obama
Washington Post - Washington,DC,USA
ORANGEBURG, SC — Is Barack Obama "authentically" black? Come on, be real. Is the pope Catholic? Obama made his first campaign trip to this early-primary …

US presidential hopeful Obama targets hedge funds with tax haven bill
HedgeWeek - London,UK
Senator Barack Obama, who has launched a campaign to become the first black US president, has thrown his backing behind a bill that would require hedge …

Political Web sites get personal
PopMatters - Chicago,IL,USA
WASHINGTON—Barack Obama’s newly revamped Web site looks a lot like MySpace and Facebook, and that is no accident. As a presidential candidate offering …

Gigabyte grass roots grow for Obama campaign
Kansas City Star - MO,USA
Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, announced that he was forming a presidential exploratory committee, Farouk Olu Aregbe logged on to Facebook.com. …

Obama: US Ready for Black President
ABC News - USA
Barack Obama, D-Ill., makes a campaign visit to Claflin University with a town-hall style meeting Saturday, Feb. 17, 2007, at the Tullis arena in Orangeburg …

Barack Obama: not your typical Chicago politician
Monterey County Herald - Monterey,CA,USA
CHICAGO - Watching Barack Obama launch his presidential campaign, you’d never know he’s from Chicago. He staged the dramatic kickoff downstate in …

The first-term Democratic senator didn’t come up through the rough ranks of Chicago politics. He got his start as a neighborhood organizer who fought City Hall. He was just a bystander to the 1983-87 reign of the city’s only African-American mayor, Harold Washington. He made his first unsuccessful run for Congress against an established black congressman, Bobby Rush. And he ran for the U.S. Senate against an Irish-American Democrat with deep roots in Chicago’s political machine and broad support from the party establishment.

"He’s an enigma," said Denny Jacobs, a former Democratic state senator from East Moline who served with Obama in the state Legislature.

"He’s not the mayor’s guy. He’s not the aldermen’s guy. He’s not the county board chairman’s guy. He’s nobody’s guy. Usually you’re somebody’s guy. In Chicago, that’s a way of life."

It’s not that Obama is at odds with Chicago politics. He’s endorsed Daley for re-election, for example.

But being free of debts to Chicago’s political establishments - black or white - gives him more freedom to seek the White House without being implicated in City Hall patronage investigations or having close ties to a controversial figure such as Jackson.

"He’s trying to show he’s not just a Chicago politician. He’s a politician for all the people," said state Sen. Terry Link, a Democrat from Will County, north of Chicago.