After graduating from law school, Obama moved to Chicago, where he was elected to the state senate in 1996 as a Democrat. 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 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 November 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.

In 1996, Obama was elected to the Illinois State Senate from Chicago's 13th District in the south-side neighborhood of Hyde Park. In January 2003, when Democrats regained control of the chamber, he was named chairman of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.Among his legislative initiatives, Obama helped to author an Illinois Earned Income Tax Credit that provided benefits to lower income families, worked for legislation that would support residents who could not afford health insurance, and helped pass bills to increase funding for AIDS prevention and care programs.[20]

In 2000, Obama made an unsuccessful Democratic primary run for the U.S. House of Representatives seat held by four-term incumbent candidate Bobby Rush. Rush, a former Black Panther and community activist, charged that Obama had not "been around the first congressional district long enough to really see what's going on." Rush received 61% of the vote to Obama's 30%. After the loss, Obama focused his efforts on the state Senate, authoring a law requiring police to videotape interrogations for crimes punishable by the death penalty. He ran unopposed in 2002.]

Reviewing Obama's career in the Illinois Senate, commentators noted his ability to work effectively with both Democrats and Republicans, and to build coalitions. In his subsequent campaign for the U.S. Senate, Obama won the endorsement of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police, whose officials cited his "longtime support of gun control measures and his willingness to negotiate compromises," despite his support for some bills that the police union had opposed.

On the role of government in economic affairs, Obama has written: "we should be asking ourselves what mix of policies will lead to a dynamic free market and widespread economic security, entrepreneurial innovation and upward mobility [...] we should be guided by what works." Speaking before the National Press Club in April 2005, Obama defended the New Deal social welfare policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, associating Republican proposals to establish private accounts for Social Security with Social Darwinism. In a May 2006 letter to President Bush, he joined four other midwest farming state Senators in calling for the preservation of a $0.54 per gallon tariff on imported ethanol.

Obama spoke out in June 2006 against making recent, temporary estate tax cuts permanent, calling the cuts a "Paris Hilton" tax break for "billionaire heirs and heiresses." Speaking in November 2006 to members of Wake Up Wal-Mart, a union-backed campaign group, Obama said: "You gotta pay your workers enough that they can actually not only shop at Wal-Mart, but ultimately send their kids to college and save for retirement."

Obama is among the first national politicians to engage the public through new Internet communication tools. He began podcasting from his U.S. Senate web site in late 2005. He has responded to and personally participated in online discussions hosted on politically-oriented blogosphere sites.[89] In a June 2006 podcast, Obama expressed support for telecommunications legislation to protect network neutrality on the internet, saying: "It is because the Internet is a neutral platform that I can put out this podcast and transmit it over the Internet without having to go through any corporate media middleman. I can say what I want without censorship or without having to pay a special charge. But the big telephone and cable companies want to change the Internet as we know it."[90]

He was an early opponent of Bush administration policies on Iraq. In the fall of 2002, Obama stated: "I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars. [...] You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings."[91] Speaking before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in November 2006, he said: "The days of using the war on terror as a political football are over. [...] It is time to give Iraqis their country back, and it is time to refocus America's efforts on the wider struggle yet to be won." In his speech Obama also called for a phased withdrawal of American troops starting in 2007, and an opening of diplomatic dialogue with Iraq's neighbors, Syria and Iran.

During his first year as a U.S. senator, in a move more typically taken after several years of holding high political office, Obama established a leadership political action committee, Hopefund, for channeling financial support to Democratic candidates. Obama participated in 38 fundraising events in 2005, helping to pull in $6.55 million for candidates he supports and his own 2010 re-election fund.[93] The New York Times described Obama as "the prize catch of the midterm campaign" because of his campaigning for fellow Democratic Party members running for election in the 2006 midterm elections.[94] Hopefund gave $374,000 to federal candidates in the 2006 election cycle, making it one of the top donors to federal candidates for the year.[94]

Obama has encouraged Democrats to reach out to evangelicals and other church-going people, saying, "if we truly hope to speak to people where they’re at—to communicate our hopes and values in a way that’s relevant to their own—we cannot abandon the field of religious discourse." In December 2006, Obama joined Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) at the "Global Summit on AIDS and the Church" organized by church leaders Kay and Rick Warren. Together with Warren and Brownback, Obama took an HIV test, as he had done in Kenya less than four months earlier. Obama encouraged "others in public life to do the same" to show "there is no shame in going for an HIV test."[98] Before the conference, pro-life groups called on Warren to rescind the invitation saying, in regards to Obama's support for the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision[99], "If Senator Obama cannot defend the most helpless citizens in our country, he has nothing to say to the AIDS crisis

bio excerpt from www.wikipedia.org