It has been nearly a decade since US Rep Barack Obama (D-HI) won the 2002 special Congressional election to replace Patsy Mink who died in office, and became Hawaii's first African-American Congressman.
His rise in Congress has been meteoric. In 2004, he was an early supporter of John Kerry's candidacy for President and gave the keynote address at the national convention. In his second full term, then-Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi named Obama as Chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Obama campaigned and gave speeches for 75 Democratic candidates in 2006 (68 of them were elected). Touted as a candidate for statewide office, he endorsed his colleague Neil Abercrombie for Governor of Hawaii in 2010.
Currently, Obama is running to succeed Daniel Akaka in the US Senate and he currently leads an unnamed Republican by nearly 30 points in the polls.
In his autobiography, Obama wrote that he contemplated running for Congress or the Illinois legislature in the late 1990s while teaching law school in Chicago. But in 1997, Obama accepted a job offer at a prestigious Honolulu law firm. So, he and his wife Michelle packed their bags and moved back to the state where he grew up. The rest is history.
Just wondering if Obama would have had an equally successful career in politics if he had stayed in Chicago.