Trivia

• His first name comes from the word that means "blessed by God" in Arabic.
• Has a beer named after him in the Kenyan town where his father was born.
• U.S. Senator from Illinois (2005- ).
• 2006: Won a Grammy for Best Spoken Word for the CD version of his autobiography "Dreams From My Father"

Run for the House

This is a summary of Barack's candidate run so far, it's provided as backdrop by wikipedia.

In February 2007, standing before the Old State Capitol building in Springfield, Illinois, Obama announced his candidacy for the 2008 U.S. presidential election.^[4] Describing his working life in Illinois, and symbolically linking the event to Abraham Lincoln's 1858 House Divided speech, he said: "That is why, in the shadow of the Old State Capitol, where Lincoln once called on a house divided to stand together, where common hopes and common dreams still live, I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States of America."^[100]

The announcement followed months of speculation on whether Obama would run in 2008. Speculation intensified in October 2006 when Obama first said he had "thought about the possibility" of running for president, departing from earlier statements that he intended to serve out his six-year Senate term through 2010.^[101]opinion polling organizations added his name to surveyed lists of Democratic candidates. The first such poll, taken in November 2006, ranked Obama in second place with 17% support among Democrats after Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) who placed first with 28% of the responses.^[102] Following Obama's statement,

Through the fall of 2006, Obama had spoken at political events across the country in support of Democratic candidates for the midterm elections. In September 2006, he was the featured speaker at Iowa Senator Tom Harkin's annual steak fry, an event traditionally attended by presidential hopefuls in the lead-up to the Iowa caucus.^[103] In December 2006, Obama spoke at a New Hampshire event celebrating Democratic Party midterm election victories in the first-in-the-nation U.S. presidential primary state.^[104][105] Addressing a meeting of the Democratic National Committee one week before announcing his candidacy, Obama called on Democrats to steer clear of negative campaigning, saying: "This can't be about who digs up more skeletons on who, who makes the fewest slip-ups on the campaign trail. We owe it to the American people to do more than that."^[106]

Obama's campaign reported raising US$25.8 million between January 1 and March 31 of 2007. The donations came from 104,000 individual donors, with US$6.9 million raised through the Internet from 50,000 of the donors.^[107] US$24.8 million of Obama's first quarter funds can be used in the primaries, the highest of any 2008 presidential candidate.^[108] In early May 2007, the U.S. Secret Service announced that Obama had been placed under their protection. The protection was not in response to any specific threat, but the campaign had received "hate mail, calls and other 'threatening materials'" in the past, and officials felt that the large crowds and increased campaign activity warranted the order.^[109]

Tracking a candidate