Building blocsBy Kevin McDermott
POST-DISPATCH SPRINGFIELD BUREAU
==Barack Obama — the young Chicago Democrat and a rising star in the state Senate — stopped by Haine's office one day. He "came in sat down, and said, 'I would like to work with you and the state's attorneys.' I was bowled over by it," Haine recalled recently. "… He was part of the liberal Senate bloc. … I just thought he would be in lockstep with those who were flatly against the death penalty. … (But) he wanted to craft meaningful reform." Haine, now an Obama presidential delegate, was one of many initially skeptical legislators who were won over by Obama during his Springfield years. Their introduction to him — a microcosm of the introduction the nation is getting right now — was rocky at first.
Legislative staffers found him so ambitious that they didn't want to work with him. Fellow black lawmakers saw him as an arrogant outsider, mocking him and, in one instance, almost coming to blows on the state Senate floor. His voting record was cautious to the point of controversy. Voters in his South Side Chicago district gave him such a drubbing in his first congressional campaign that he felt "personally repudiated by the entire community," he would later write. Along the way, say people who knew him then, Obama was learning crucial lessons that have come into play on the national stage lately as he fights for the Democratic presidential nomination.
...In 1999, after two years as a state senator, Obama challenged the re-election of U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Chicago, a former Black Panther. Ignoring advice from his growing circle of state Senate confidants, Obama launched a campaign that few believed he was ready for. Obama's 2006 autobiography, "The Audacity of Hope," recalls the congressional primary campaign as a debacle, "a race in which everything that could go wrong did go wrong, in which my own mistakes were compounded by tragedy and farce."
...But Shomon, the state Senate staffer, said that loss was crucial to Obama's successful U.S. Senate campaign four years later because it demonstrated his cross-cultural appeal. Though Obama was beaten badly overall, he won 70 percent of the vote in one mostly white ward of the largely black district. After the loss, Obama resumed his state Senate career and, by most accounts, began to look less like an annoying young prodigy and more like a statesman. He gained a reputation among Republicans and conservative Democrats as a conduit into the liberal wing of the chamber.
"He was perceptive enough to come over to our side of the aisle and attempt to work with us" while the Republicans were in charge of the state Senate before 2003, said Sen. Kirk Dillard, R-Hinsdale. "Sen. Obama may not always be with you, but you'll be guaranteed he will listen to you and understand you and ask the right questions."
By the time Haine, the Alton Democrat, got to know Obama in early 2003, he was already talking privately to friends about a U.S. Senate run the following year, a move that would put him on his current path as a presidential contender. "My votes on many issues were several clicks to the right of Barack, but he was always reaching out, not only to me, to everyone else on both sides of the aisle. (I decided) this was the job for him," recalls Haine. "He came to my home in Alton in the summer. We had lemonade on the back deck there … and I introduced him to people in the community."
It was a tough sell at first with Metro East Democratic officials, Haine said. "I got some derision," says Haine. "… They said, 'This guy, Obama, sounds like some guy from the Middle East. He's got no money, no name recognition, you must be out of your mind.' I said, 'Just wait. Mark my words. He's got magic.'"==
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/illinoisnews/story/924725BBB328259D862573AB00145101?OpenDocument
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