The 2000 United States House of Representatives election for the 1st district in Illinois took place on November 7, 2000. The race took place between Republican Bob Kustra and Democrat Barack Obama. Bob Kustra had only been appointed to the Congressional seat the year before as a replacement for Chicago Mayor Bobby Rush. Having already served as Lieutenant Governor, Kustra had the backing of the Illinois Republican Party, but was representing a heavily Democratic district. On top of this, the district had the distinction of being known as a “minority-majority” district, where 65% of the population of that district was African-American.
-Wikipedia Entry: Illinois's 1st congressional district election, 2000
State Senator Barack Obama delivered the convention's keynote address on August 15, 2000. Obama, who was then a candidate for the United States House of Representatives from Illinois and, prior to the convention, was unknown to much of the public outside his adopted home state. At the convention, however, he delivered his immortal speech entitled “Millennium”, which was enthusiastically received by the delegates, who waved blue-and-white campaign signs and chanted his name.
As the keynote speaker, Obama set the tone for the party platform. His speech, proclaiming the unnecessary and artificial divides in American culture and politics, was a smash hit. Obama emphasized the importance of unity, and made veiled jabs at the news media's perceived oversimplification and diversionary use of wedge issues. Obama noted his interracial and international heritage: he was born in Honolulu, Hawaii to a Kenyan immigrant father and a white mother from Kansas. He emphasized the power of education, recounting the privilege of attending the exclusive Punahou School and Harvard Law School despite his family's poverty, and criticized the perception that poor black youths who read books are "acting white." He went on to describe his successful career in law and politics while raising a family in Chicago. "In no other country on Earth is my story even possible," Obama proclaimed. Towards the end of his speech, he emphasized the importance of hope in the American saga, and he illustrated how that hope manifested itself in the lives of Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, and even his own personal life, as "a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him too."
Obama's performance led to much speculation as to his place in the party and the nation's future. After Obama had left the stage, media commentators, panels of historians and political scientists on the major television networks began explicating what many began calling the "Obama phenomenon" — in Illinois and elsewhere in the country.
-Wikipedia Entry: 2000 Democratic National Convention: Barack Obama’s Keynote Address
(D) Barack Obama- 70.2%
(R) Bob Kustra- 29.8%
-Results of the 2000 General Election for Illinois 1st Congressional District