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.He completedhis work at the Law Review and graduated with high honorsfrom Harvard Law School in 1991. 57Legal TrainingAs editor of the Law Review, Obama promised to make the journal a forum for debate. But first, he had to face debate among his owneditorial staff infighting was common because of differences inpolitical views.TEACHER AND ACTIVISTObama honored his pledge to return to Chicago.He began adrive to register voters for the 1992 elections, ultimately regis-tering more than 100,000 voters.He solicited financial supportfor the drive from many of Chicago s most prominent Demo-cratic contributors and built contacts among Chicago s success-ful black executives and entrepreneurs.Many of these men andwomen would support Obama when he chose to run for office.On a personal note, Obama married Michelle Robinson in1992 and worked on his book, which was published in 1995.Obama had many big-money offers from large law firms,but instead he chose to accept a position with the small lawfirm of Miner, Barnhill & Galland, which specialized in civil 58BARACK OBAMArights and housing discrimination cases for low-income cli-ents.He also took a part-time job teaching constitutional lawat the University of Chicago.He loved his teaching, and henoted his appreciation for the moment when the Constitutionbecame accessible for his students, a part not just of the pastbut of their present and their future. In 1996, at age 37, Obama decided to enter politics witha run for the Illinois State Senate.He won and traveled toSpringfield to take his place in the legislature. 17Illinois State SenatorAlthough a group of friends urged Obama to run for an open seatin the Illinois state legislature, he had actually been consider-ing a move into politics for several years.In Dreams From MyFather, Obama described the work assatisfying, mostly because the scale of state politics allowsfor concrete results an expansion of health insurancefor poor children, or a reform of laws that send innocentmen to death row within a meaningful time frame.Andtoo, because within the capitol building of a big, industrialstate, one sees every day the face of a nation in constantconversation: inner-city mothers and corn and bean farm-ers, immigrant day laborers alongside suburban investmentbankers all jostling to be heard, all ready to tell theirstories.59 60BARACK OBAMAObama would go on to serve in the Illinois state legislaturefrom 1997 to 2004.While there, he was a member of the Com-mittee on Health and Human Services (serving as its chair-person), the Judiciary Committee, the Committee on LocalGovernment, and the Committee on Welfare.He focusedon welfare legislation and the earned income tax credit.Hiswork on behalf of the tax credit helped result, over a three-year period, in more than $100 million in tax cuts for familiesthroughout Illinois.Another key issue for Obama was expand-ing early childhood education.Obama worked to pass a statute requiring the videotapingof interrogations and confessions in homicide cases, despitethe opposition of prosecutors, who argued that the electronicrecording would be expensive and cumbersome.The newlyelected Democratic governor of Illinois had declared hisopposition to the videotaping of interrogations during hiscampaign, and Obama risked being labeled as soft on crime for his stance.Obama s solution was to bring together in regular meetingsrepresentatives from the prosecutors offices, public defenders,members of police organizations, and representatives lobbyingto strike down the death penalty.These meetings were con-vened quietly and in private, and Obama wisely focused noton the death penalty but instead on the desire to keep innocentpeople off death row and to ensure that the guilty were caughtand punished. When police representatives presented con-crete problems with the bill s design that would have impededtheir investigations, we modified the bill, he later wrote in TheAudacity of Hope.When police representatives offered to videotape only con-fessions, we held firm, pointing out that the whole purposeof the bill was to give the public confidence that confes-sions were obtained free of coercion.At the end of theprocess, the bill had the support of all the parties involved. 61Illinois State SenatorObama served in the Illinois state legislature from 1997 to 2004.Above,he confers with Illinois Senate president Emil Jones on the Senate floorduring a session at the state capitol in Springfield, Illinois.It passed unanimously in the Illinois Senate and was signedinto law.There were frustrations as well as successes.His bill to pro-vide school breakfasts to preschoolers was defeated.For six ofhis eight years in the state Senate, he and his fellow Democratswere the minority in a Republican-controlled Senate, making itdifficult for Democratic-sponsored bills to be signed into law.Even in the political minority, though, Obama s workwas often critical, in part because of his willingness to build 62BARACK OBAMAconsensus by crossing party lines to obtain the support ofRepublican colleagues. He was looked upon by members ofboth parties as someone whose view we listened carefully to, Republican state senator Kirk Dillard told CBS News in Janu-ary 2007. He was passionate in his views, state senator DaveSyverson, a Republican committee chairman who worked onwelfare reform with Obama, noted in Joe Klein s Time inter-view. We had some pretty fierce arguments.We went roundand round about how much to spend on day care, for example.But he was not your typical party-line politician.A lot ofDemocrats didn t want to have any work requirement at all forpeople on welfare.Barack was willing to make that deal. Obama was often forced to take positions on critical issues.Inthe State Senate, he supported abortion rights and family plan-ning services.He supported gun-control measures, including aban on semiautomatic assault weapons and a limit on hand-gun purchases to one per month.He argued that people chargedwith violating local handgun bans after using their guns in theirhomes should not be allowed to use self-defense as an excuse.He and fellow Democrats alleged that the measure could openloopholes that would allow gun owners who used their weaponson the street to claim self-defense, too.Despite his opposition,however, the bill passed 41 16 and became state law.Although he was generally a proponent of gun control,Obama did support a measure to let retired police officersand military police carry concealed weapons.He also joinedhis fellow Democrats in an effort to solve a budget deficit byraising more than 300 taxes and fees on businesses in 2004, aneffort that passed in the Senate 30 28.By 2004, Obama and the other Democrats controlled theSenate.Obama played a key role in many efforts during thefinal two years of his service in the state legislature.He contin-ued his efforts to overhaul the capital punishment system andplayed an important role in requiring a study of traffic stopsacross the state to search for signs of racial profiling. 63Illinois State SenatorBarack and Michelle Obama have two daughters: Malia, born in 1999,and Natasha, born in 2001.Above, the Obama family spends timetogether in their hotel suite on the eve of the 2004 U.S.Senate Demo-cratic primary.Obama was elected to the Senate later that year
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