Todd Spivak of the Houston Press, who covered Obama in Illinois, has posted an insightful story today called "Barack Obama And Me." Mr. Spivak was a reporter in Chicago and lived near Obama in Hyde Park when Obama was a State Senator.  

Mr. Spivak's unique perspective and experience offers critically important information about Sen. Obama's "strong arm tactics" in winning his first election; Obama's legislative record, built during his last year in the State Senate for the purpose of advancing his political career; Obama's questionable delivery of earmarks; his neglect of Chicago communities during his State Senate years; and Obama's associations with sleazy Chicago characters such as Tony Rezko and Dorothy Tillman.

The story also touches on the resentment felt towards Obama by many of his Illinois colleagues for the way in which Obama has pursued his ambitions.  When Spivak explored this topic in a piece published in the Illinois Times during Obama's U.S. Senate run in 2004, Obama called him the morning after the story appeared and "screamed" at Spivak.

In today's story, Spivak writes about Obama's meteoric political evolution:  "Obama has spent his entire political career trying to win the next step up. Every three years, he has aspired to a more powerful political position."

In light of Obama's complaints about the lawsuit filed by Clinton supporters in Nevada challenging casino caucus sites, which inspired Obama's nasty Spanish-language radio ad calling Clinton a "disgrace," it's interesting to learn how Obama won his first election:

Obama hired fellow Harvard Law alum and election law expert Thomas Johnson to challenge the nominating petitions of four other candidates, including the popular incumbent, Alice Palmer, a liberal activist who had held the seat for several years. Obama found enough flaws in the petition sheets...to knock off all the other contenders. He won the seat unopposed.

"A close examination of Obama's first campaign clouds the image he has cultivated throughout his political career," wrote Tribune political reporters David Jackson and Ray Long. "The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it."

....Even some of (Obama's) staunchest supporters...resent the strong-arm tactics Obama employed to win his seat in the Illinois Legislature.

Three years later, in September 1999,  Obama announced his run for U.S. Congress and lost in 2000 to Bobby Rush, who painted Obama "as an out-of-touch elitist." Three years after that election, in January 2003, Obama announced his bid for U.S. Senate.  He won that race in 2004 against Alan Keyes after two opponents dropped out due to personal scandals.  "Three years later," Spivak writes, "in February 2007, Obama announced his bid for the White House."

Spivak explains how Obama's state legislative record in Illinois was created in one year's time, facilitated by Emil Jones Jr., who appointed Obama sponsor of several high-profile bills with the intention of building Obama's record for his U.S. Senate run and in the process irking many senior legislators who had labored for years.  Jones had served in the Illinois Legislature for 30 years and represented a district on the Chicago South Side near Obama's district. He became the Senate Majority Leader in 2002 after 26 years of Republican control.

Spivak writes that "Jones became Obama's kingmaker." Jones declared to a black radio host:  "I'm gonna make me a U.S. Senator." And he did:

Jones appointed Obama sponsor of virtually every high-profile piece of legislation, angering many rank-and-file state legislators who had more seniority than Obama and had spent years championing the bills.

Obama succeeded:

During his seventh and final year in the state Senate, Obama's stats soared. He sponsored a whopping 26 bills passed into law -- including many he now cites in his presidential campaign when attacked as inexperienced.><It was a stunning achievement that started him on the path of national politics -- and he couldn't have done it without Jones.

Obama thanked Jones in this way:

Last June, to prove his commitment to government transparency, Obama released a comprehensive list of his earmark requests for fiscal year 2008. It comprised more than $300 million in pet projects for Illinois, including tens of millions for Jones's Senate district.

But Obama's leapfrogging left many Senate colleagues feeling cheated:

"I took all the beatings and insults and endured all the racist comments over the years from nasty Republican committee chairmen," State Senator Rickey Hendon, the original sponsor of landmark racial profiling and videotaped confession legislation yanked away by Jones and given to Obama, complained to me at the time. "Barack didn't have to endure any of it, yet, in the end, he got all the credit.

"I don't consider it bill jacking," Hendon told me. "But no one wants to carry the ball 99 yards all the way to the one-yard line, and then give it to the halfback who gets all the credit and the stats in the record book.

For all Obama's accomplishments in that single year, he neglected his own community, says Spivak:

On the stump, Obama has frequently invoked his experiences as a community organizer on the Chicago South Side in the early 1990s, when he passed on six-figure salary offers at corporate law firms after graduating from Harvard Law School to direct a massive voter-registration drive.

But, as a state senator, Obama evaded leadership on a host of critical community issues, from historic preservation to the rapid demolition of nearby public-housing projects, according to many South Siders.

Harold Lucas, a veteran South Side community organizer who remembers when Obama was "just a big-eared kid fresh out of school," says he didn't finally decide to support Obama's presidential bid until he was actually inside the voting booth on Super Tuesday.

"I'm not happy about the quality of life in my community," says Lucas, who now heads a black-heritage tourism business in Chicago. "As a local elected official, he had a primary role in that."

Obama's "shady land deal" with Tony Rezko is briefly mentioned by Spivak and he describes Obama's endorsement in March 2007 of "controversial Chicago alderman Dorothy Tillman" in her re-election bid.  Three months earlier, the Lakefront Outlook, in a story that won a national George Polk award, exposed "flagrant cronyism and possible tax-law violations" related to Tillman.   Spivak writes:

Many speculate Obama only bothered to weigh in on a paltry city council election during his presidential campaign as a gesture to Chicago's powerful Mayor Richard M. Daley, a Tillman supporter. Even so, Obama should have remained neutral, says Timuel Black, a historian and City Colleges of Chicago professor emeritus who lived in Obama's state Senate district.

"That was not a wise decision," (Timuel) Black says. "It was poor judgment on his part. He was operating like a politician trying to win the next step up."

The link to today's story: http://www.houstonpress.com/2008-02-28/n ews/barack-obama-screamed-at-me/