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Barack Obama
Politician
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Barack Obama is the junior United States Senator from Illinois. He is the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history and the only African American currently serving in the U.S. Senate. He comes from a very diverse background, his father was from Kenya, his mother was from Kansas and his ancestry can also be linked to Native Americans and Confederacy president Jefferson Davis. This diverse background helps him maintain popularity with many varying backgrounds. Obama was elected to the Illinois state senate in 1996. Four years later, he made an unsuccessful run for the U.S. House of Representatives. After rededicating his efforts to the state senate and winning reelection unopposed in 2002, Obama ran for an open seat in the U.S. Senate two years later. Midway through the campaign, Obama delivered the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, raising his national stature. He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 with a landslide 70% of the vote. On January 16, 2007, Obama announced that he had taken the first step toward becoming a candidate for the 2008 presidential election by forming an exploratory committee. Recent opinion polls rank him as the second most popular choice among Democratic voters for their party's nominationone">
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