Republican Party:

The Republican Party had its start in the year 1854 by anti-slavery expansion activists and modernizers. Up until the 1860 election, the Republican party had been gaining prominence, but it wasn't really a major threat to the dominating Democrat party. It was in that 1860 election that the Democrats split into four factions and thus the Republican nominee, Abraham Lincoln took the office. Only months later, the country was plunged into the Civil War. Republicans would take the Senate and House through the next election cycle, Abramham Lincoln was assassinated, and turmoil over the South's reconstruction would wage on for years.

The party dominated the Presidency, with just one Democrat having the White House from 1860 to 1912.

Alan Keyes

Status: Running

Entered Race: September 14, 2007

Dr. Alan Keyes, a social conservative who has been a bombastic TV and radio show host, is making a third run for President in 2008. Keyes previously lost runs for the GOP Presidential nomination in 1996 and 2000, for US Senate in Maryland in 1988 and 1992, and for US Senate in Illinois in 2004. Keyes -- who holds a Ph.D. in Government from Harvard and was initially a US Foreign Service Officer -- served in the Reagan Administration as US Ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (1983-85) and Assistant US Secretary of State (1985-87). Since then, Keyes has been involved with a variety of conservative causes and these days maintains his own leadership PAC. Keyes has maintained friendly ties with the ultra-conservative Constitution Party, but remains a member of the GOP. A group of his supporters purpotedly "drafted" him to run for President again in 2008. However, it should be noted the draft group operated from a website owned and controlled directly by Keyes. He formally announced his candidacy in September 2007. Some Constitution Party leaders are hopeful Keyes may seek their nomination if a pro-choice, pro-gay rights nominee like Rudy Giuliani is on the GOP ticket.

Mike Gravel

Status: Running

Mike Gravel's attempt at president is about equal to Chris Dodd, maybe worse. His campaign reported about 500 dollars raised to Hillary's 31 million, which makes me beg the question...what is the point? Again, there is the possibity of a VP position, but based on his passed views including supporting gay marriage, decriminalization of marijuana, federal financing of stem cell research, and similar positions that most candidates won't touch, he will likely be out early and won't even be considered. Most recently during the democratic debate he admitted that he believed that American troops that died in Vietnaum had died in vain.

Dennis Kucinich

Status: Withdrawn

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), the boy wonder who was elected mayor of Cleveland at 31, is running for President again, as he did in 2004. He has no chance of getting the Democratic nomination, which in his case is liberating. Unlike the other candidates, who have to be respectful to everyone and all ideas, no matter how nutty, Kucinich just says what he thinks. He is an unabashed old-school liberal and has a very detailed program he is running on, including immediate removal of all U.S. troops from Iraq, a single-payer health system for all Americans, legalizing same-sex marriage, and more. His main problem is that with a real horse race this time between Hillary, Obama, Edwards, and maybe others, few Democrats are likely to make a protest vote for him when they actually have a real choice in influencing who the nominee is. Nevertheless, his campaign will put some ideas on the table, however unpopular they may be in some quarters now.

Again, Kucinich got little to no attention throughout the primary process, and finally withdrew.

Some Information gathered at Electoral-Vote.com

Chris Dodd

Status: Withdrawn
Withdrew: Jan. 3, 2008


Chris Dodd has nothing going for him. He stands little chance to win, in fact, I will call on the fact that he WON'T be the democratic nomination. Many people see him as dropping out before the Iowa caucuses. There is a slim chance as someone picking him up as a VP candidate, but that is also very unlikely. Recently he has gotten very little show time both on the national surface and during the democratic debate.

As expected, the Dodd campaign never really went anywhere and after a poor showing at the Iowa Caucus, finally called it quits.

Bill Richardson

Status: Running

To win the presidency, the Democrats have to do better in the South, the Lower Midwest, or the interior West. Furthermore, governors do a lot better than senators. Add to this the fact that Hispanics are the fastest growing ethnic group in the country. Enter Bill Richardson stage left, the Hispanic governor of New Mexico, who previously served in Congress, was ambassador to the United Nations, and was Bill Clinton's Secretary of Energy. Richardson's mother is Mexican and he grew up in Mexico City, so he speaks fluent Spanish. He just won reelection with 68% of the vote, the largest gubernatorial win in the state's history. He is well-known in the region and a Richardson candidacy could potentially bring in New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado, all of which have sizeable and growing Hispanic populations. Of course, against John McCain, they cancel each other on the the regional aspect.

Information from Electoral-vote.com

John Edwards

Status: Withdrawn.

John Edwards has many things going for him. He has a strong base hanging over from the 2004 elections, a great speaker, very needed in southern states, and is simply a likable guy. Believe it or not, I think he stands the best chance to win than any other candidate in my opinion. Time will tell if he gets to put all of that to use but he is easily one of the favorites to win in the upcoming elections.

John Edwads turned out to be a big flop. After yet another poor performance in Florida he dropped out on Jan. 30th, 2008.

Barack Obama

Status: Running

Barack Obama is a fresh young senator that lately has been a money making machine. He is running well againist Hillary, but there are several problems that also make him a target for Republicans. He is in his first year as a senator, has no foreign policy experience, and is an African-American, which sadly still matters to some people. Despite these problems, he is on Hillary's heels, and is matching up very well againist the top Republican candidates. He is one watch for in the future.

Hillary Clinton

Status: Running

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is the one of the senators from New York. She is married to Bill ofcourse, the 42nd president, and was the first lady from 1993 to 2001. She is also a lawyer and former first lady of Arkansas.
Clinton was elected to the United States Senate in 2000, becoming the first First Lady elected to public office and the first woman elected statewide in New York. She was re-elected in 2006. Clinton is running but is a scary candidate for both parties. Republicans are worried because they hate her. Democrats are worried because quite a bit of people don't like her and that alone could keep the white house from their grasp.

Joe Biden

Status: Withdrawn
Withdrew: Jan. 3, 2008

Biden declared his candidacy for president on January 31, 2007, although he had discussed running for months prior. [24] In the January 23, 2006 edition of The News Journal, Delaware's largest daily newspaper, columnist Harry F. Themal reported that Biden "occupies the sensible center of the Democratic Party." Themal concludes that this is the position Biden desires, and that in a campaign "he plans to stress the dangers to the security of the average American, not just from the terrorist threat, but from the lack of health assistance, crime, and energy dependence on unstable parts of the world." He goes on to quote Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen as saying that Biden's "manic-obsessive running of the mouth" could be the character weakness that disqualifies him. Things went very poorly his last attempt at the white house in 1988, as he was accused of plagiarism after striking resembelence to a speech by British leader Neil Kinnock.

After some believed that he could be a suprise candidate, his campaign did nothing all the way up until dropping out after the Iowa Caucus.

Duncan Hunter

Status: Withdrawn

Duncan Hunter is the congressman of CA-52 and is probably the least likely person to get the nomination. I will go ahead and call this one, he is just not gonna come close.

He may hold the strong values with the people, but he is not well known, nor can he put up th e money needed to win the election.

Tom Tancredo

Status: Withdrawn
Entered Race: April 2, 2007
Withdrew: December 20, 2007

Tom Tancredo, a former history teacher and the current congressman from CO-06 can be best described as a one-trick pony. He opposes illegal immigration, supports deportation for illegal immigrants, condemns President Bush's plan to allow illegal immigrants to eventually obtain citizenship, and criticizes the Denver public library for having books in Spanish. He has zero chance of getting the Republican nomination, but will surely stir up a lot of debate in the process of losing.

Mike Huckabee

Status: Running

Mike Huckabee, born in Hope, Arkansas, just finished his second elected term as governor of his native state. He is keenly aware that another Hope native who governed Arkansas went on to bigger and better things. Huckabee used to be so fat that he could barely walk up the steps to his office. His subsequent diagnosis of diabetes scared teh daylights out of him and he lost over 100 pounds and wrote a book entitled "Quit Digging Your Grave with a Knife and Fork. As governor he has focused on health issues. As an ordained Baptist minister from the South, he has a leg up on the competition, but as governor, he had to be pragmatic and is not the kind of firebrand many Republicans want. Still, if everyone else falters, he may look increasingly good. If McCain, Giuliani, and Romney falter, Huckabee and Brownback (sometimes contracted to Huckaback) may move to the front of the pack.

There is also some talk of him taking a bid as an independent in the future. This could be bad news for the GOP.

Jim Gilmore

Status: Withdrawn from Race
Entered Race: January 2, 2007
Withdrew: July 14, 2007

Gilmore was elected Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1997. Gilmore campaigned heavily on the twin promises of hiring 4,000 new teachers in public schools and phasing out Virginia's car tax. According to the Washington Post, "Virginia's politicians struggled to balance car-tax relief against demands for public services." Beginning in 2001, Virginia's economy slowed and tax revenues flattened. In addition to a downturn in the national economy in 2001, Northern Virginia's economy was severely slowed after the terrorists flew a hijacked airplane into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, on September 11, 2001, resulting in the closure of Reagan National Airport for several months. Despite the economic downturn, Gilmore insisted on advancing the car tax phase out from a 50% reduction of each taxpayer's bill to a 70% reduction.
Gilmore also implemented new Standards of Learning reforms in Virginia's public schools. The Standards of Learning prescribed a uniform curriculum in math, science, English and social studies and instituted new tests at the end of the third, fifth and eighth grades, as well as end-of-course tests in high school, to measure student achievement. During Gilmore's term, Virginia's public school students' scores increased on these state tests as well as nationally normed tests.
Gilmore created the nation's first state Secretary of Technology, a position first held by Donald Upson. Together they established a statewide technology commission, and signed into law the nation's first comprehensive state Internet policy.
During his term, Gilmore chaired the Congressional Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce. The Commission was charged with the task of making recommendations to the United States Congress on Internet taxation, and it ultimately opposed taxation of the Internet.
During his term, 37 people were executed in Virginia. Gilmore granted executive clemency to one death row inmate on the basis of mental illness. He pardoned death row inmate Earl Washington after DNA tests, ordered by Gilmore, implicated another person. Gilmore also ordered DNA tests in the case of Derek Rocco Barnabei; the tests confirmed Barnabei's guilt and he was executed.
As Governor, Gilmore signed into law legislation establishing a 24-hour waiting period for women seeking an abortion, as well as a ban against partial birth abortion and increased funding for adoption services. He also signed into law a bill that banned human cloning. In 1999, Gilmore went to court to try to prevent the removal of a feeding tube of coma victim Hugh Finn.
Gilmore was succeeded by Democrat Mark Warner in 2002. The Virginia Constitution forbids any Governor from serving consecutive terms, so Gilmore could not have run for a second term in 2001.

Tommy Thompson

Status: Withdrawn
Entered Race: April 1, 2007
Withdrew: August 11, 2007

From 1987 to 2001, Thompson served as the 42nd Governor of Wisconsin, having been elected to an unprecedented four terms.
Thompson's initiatives during his 13 years as governor of Wisconsin were his Wisconsin Works welfare reform and school choice programs. In 1990, Thompson pushed for the creation of the United States's first parental school-choice program, allowing low-income Milwaukee families to send children to the private or public school of their choice at taxpayer expense. He also created the BadgerCare program, designed to provide health coverage to those families whose employers don't provide health insurance but make too much money to qualify for Medicaid. Through the federal waiver program, Thompson helped replicate this program in several states when he became Secretary of Health and Human Services.
From 1998 to 1999, he served as president of the CSG and, with the organization's chairman, Senator Kenneth McClintock, the nonvoting member from Puerto Rico, led a top-level delegation to the People's Republic of China. Thompson left office when he was appointed by President George W. Bush as HHS Secretary.

He has now dropped out of the race.

Ron Paul

Status: Running

Born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Ron Paul moved to Texas in 1968, where he set up a medical practice specializing in obstetrics/gynecology (Dr. Paul boasts he has delivered over 4,000 babies). There, he ran for Congress and won in the late 70s and, as a Republican, served until 1984, when he voluntarily relinquished his seat and returned to his practice.
His retirement from politics wouldn’t last long, however. In 1988, he publically changed his registration from Republican to the Libertarian Party, and in that same year, he ran for president on the Libertarian ticket, ultimately receiving 431,750 votes.
After his presidential bid, Paul switched his registration back to Republican, and won back his seat in the Texas 14th Congressional District in 1997, a seat he still holds. In the House of Representatives, Paul serves on the Financial Services Committee (as vice-chairman of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee), the International Relations committee, and the Joint Economic Committee.
Besides his legislative duties and outspoken advocacy of a strict adherence to the Constitution, Rep. Paul has also published a number of books, among them Challenge to Liberty, The Case for Gold, and A Republic, If You Can Keep It.

Sam Brownback

Status: Withdrawn from Race

Entered Race: January 20, 2007

Withdrew: October 19, 2007

Sam Brownback is a Republican U.S. Senator from Kansas and, as of January 20, 2006, a candidate for the 2008 Republican nomination for President. He piggybacked his announcement to run for president on that of the better known Democratic Senator from New York Hillary Rodham Clinton in an attempt to win additional news media attention. Brownback's party primary election niche is that of a non-Mormon Christian conservative who appears to timidly oppose the War in Iraq. A pusillanimous position to take on the most important issue of the day to be sure but it reflects the sentiment of a significant segment of the Republican primary electorate. They know something is very wrong with the War in Iraq and want to get the U.S. miltiary out of the quagmire without their having to acknowledge responsibility for having supported the war in the first place.

Brownback presents himself as a consistent Christian conservative. "I am pro-life and whole life," he claims by way of explaining his opposition to abortion domestically and apparent support for the U.S. as world policeman to stop the Darfur genocide.

Brownback dropped out of the race October 19, 2007.

Fred Thompson

Status: Withdrawn

Entered Race: September 1st, 2007

Fred Dalton Thompson is a former Republican Senator from Tennessee and a possible Republican candidate for the presidency in 2008. He was born in Sheffield, Alabama on August 19, 1942 and attended public schools in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. When he was 17 years old, Thompson married Sarah Elizabeth Lindsey. They were divorced 25 years later, and Thompson has two surviving children and several grandchildren from that marriage. In 2002, one of his daughters died. Later that year, he married Jeri Kehn, a Republican lawyer who is 25 years his junior. They have two children. Thompson has said that he has a treatable form of lymphoma.

Thompson began his political career as an anti-union activist, after which he established his county's Young Republican club. He joined former U.S. Sen. Howard Baker's reelection campaign in 1972. Thompson was elected to the Senate in a 1994 special election to fill the seat left vacant after Al Gore was elected Vice-President. Thompson was re-elected in 1996, but did not seek reelection in 2002.

John McCain

Status: Running
Entered Race: Formal announcement on April 25, 2007

John McCain is a Republican U.S. Senator from Arizona and frontrunner in the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. He lost the race for that nomination in 2000 because George W. Bush mobilized the masses of highly disciplined but not very discerning white fundamentalists of the Bible Belt against him. He now rarely misses an opportunity to abase himself before them.
For his 2008 Republican presidential nomination campaign has reportedly lined up Terry Nelson as his campaign manager. Nelson was national political director for President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, he has a long record of ethically dubious activities. McCain will be a rather elderly 72 years old on election day of 2008; in contrast, Ronald Reagan was 69 when he was elected to his first term as president. His mental fitness for the office will be an issue in the campaign.

43- George W. Bush

"Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity."

Quick Facts:

Born: July 6th, 1944








The 43rd President of the United States of America, George Walker Bush (known colloquially as "W" to distinguish himself from his father, George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st president of the U.S.), was born two days after the national holiday of the Fourth of July, 1946 in New Haven, Connecticut where his father was attending Yale College in the Class of 1949. His mother was the former Barbara Pierce, whom his father had married on January 6, 1945. W was their first child.Initially, W's prospects of living up to his illustrious pedigree were dim. Possibly hobbled by dyslexia (a condition little understood and seldom treated during his childhood), Bush proved an uninspired student. He did maintain a gentlemanly "C" average at Yale and acquired a Masters of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School, but until he turned 40, he seemed to be floundering. He admittedly had a drinking problem in his youth, but a late marriage to Laura Welch helped stabilize him, His rebirth as a believing Christian (he is a Methodist whereas his parents were Episcopalian) helped put him on the straight and narrow path that led him to the Presidency.Bush has been discounted many times in his life and career for being unintelligent due to his fractured speaking style, but in fact, his academic performance was on par if not slightly better than that of his better-spoken, fellow Yalie John Kerry. As Bush's test scores and subsequent achievements suggest an above average intelligence, it is appropriate to believe that he likely has benefited from other's underestimation of his gifts. This was apparent in the first televised debate with Al Gore in 2000, when Bush held his own against the condescending vice president, and in doing so, triumphed in the eyes of the political handicappers.After W. turned his life around in the late 1980s, he began achieving success on his own, though that success inevitably was indebted to his social position and his father's business and political connections, particularly after he himself ascended to the Presidency after the expiration of Ronald Reagan's second term. The first President Bush (Bush 41, as he is colloquially known) had great connections in the Middle East, particularly with the Saudi royal family and the powerful Bin Laden clan. Using his father's Saudi connections, Bush fils became a millionaire twice over through Middle Eastern oil projects. His most notable achievement in private life was in becoming president and chief operating partner of the Texas Rangers professional baseball team, which was financially invigorated by the building of a new stadium with taxpayers' funds. For a man whose greatest ambition was not the presidency but to be baseball commissioner, the "job" of Rangers owner suited him just fine, and his stint as the amiable owner of the team helped generate good publicity that wiped out his past image as a playboy. When he cashed out his ownership stake, Bush had a $14 million profit. More importantly, ownership of the Rangers positioned him financially and in the public eye for a successful run for the governorship of Texas, which proved to be his springboard to the presidency.Under the quirky Texas constitution, the governor of Texas is primarily a ceremonial position, somewhat akin to that of the president in a Parliamentary system. The true political power in Texas lies with the lieutenant governor, who acts as a prime minister (or provincial premier in Canada) in that that he/she runs the legislature. In a life characterized by luck, the capricious Bush was luckier still in that he was told by the lieutenant governor, a Democrat, that he would make Bush a great governor if he would let him. Bush did and established an enviable reputation, one that crossed both party lines in Texas, where it would have been futile for the governor to act in a partisan fashion.With his father's Eastern Establishment credentials that linked him to the "Rockefeller Republicans" (conservative on financial matters, liberal on social issues) and his mother's own noted social liberalism, Bush was seen as being a moderate with a difference. That difference was his connections to the powerful evangelical Christian wing of the Republican Party, due to his own rebirth as a believing Christian and his immersion in day-to-day Texas politics. In the Sun Belt, fundamentalists and evangelicals were considered ordinary, run-of-the-day folk, not the exotics that Washington and the Eastern Establishment looked at them as.With a foot in both wings of the party, Bush was seen as a natural candidate for president after Bob Dole's dolorous 1996 candidacy. That he was a "straight shooter" with no scandal attached to him since his misbegotten youth (which he had confessed to and had put behind him) made him attractive to the Republicans, who had tried to terminate William Jefferson Clinton's presidency through impeachment due to his lies linked to his "bimbo eruptions." Bush seemed like a "Man for All Seasons" that would be the GOP's best shot of unseating the Clintonistas as represented by Al Gore in the 2000 presidential election.With the Republican Establishment firmly behind him as a kind of "Great White Hope" of the Grand Old Party, Bush managed to wrap up the nomination easily, after stumbling initially when confronted with the candidacy of the renegade Republican senator from Arizona, John McCain. Although viewed by most Republicans as a RINO (Republican in name only), McCain dominated the early primaries in states that allowed cross over voting by attracting middle-of-the-road independents and conservative Democrats, but stumbled himself when the primary season headed South. He was badly defeated by Bush in South Carolina, a deeply conservative state that had voted for favorite son (and segregationist) Strom Thurmond in 1948, uber-conservative Barry Goldwater in 1964, and segregationist George Wallace in '68. McCain also was victimized by smear tactics, such as the whispering campaign started by Mississippi Senator Trent Lott that claimed the renegade McCain had been mentally discombobulated by his seven years as a POW in Vietnam. The dirty tricks used against McCain by Bush campaign manager/ major domo Karl Rove would prove to be harbingers of the paranoid style of politics that would come to fruition during Bush's first term.) McCain, a maverick senator with the support of many moderate Republicans and Independents as well as a following among conservative Democrats, was not only smeared, but his attempts to get on the ballot in such states as New York were stymied until the federal courts stepped in. (In 2004, even though he endorsed Bush against Kerry, McCain found himself smeared again by elements connected with Karl Rove when he defended Kerry's war record and patriotism.) The Republican Establishment were determined to give the nomination to a true blue Republican who could win (the color red was not associated with the GOP until Election Night 2000, when it was used as the map color for the Party after a century wherein the Republicans were blue and the Democrats red). After his defeat of McCain in South Carolina, Bush had as easy a time wrapping up the nomination as if he had been an incumbent. At the beginning of the fall campaign, what with the U.S. still enjoying the tail end of almost eight years of prosperity under President Bill Clinton, his vice president, Al Gore, started out as a prohibitive favorite to win the presidency. Gore, whoever, turned out to be unable to shed his past reputation as an uninspiring campaigner, and failed to fire up the uncommitted. Bush, on the other hand, a relative unknown commodity who had enjoyed good press for the past decade as a baseball owner and governor, did not make many errors after appearing at Bob Jones University several weeks after it had banned interracial dating during the early Republican primaries (for which he apologized). He capitalized on the low expectations others had for him, and won respect - and votes - for going the distance without stumbling or embarrassing himself, while Gore had to live down the bimbo eruptions of his past running mate and his own faux pas, such as his claim to have invented the "Information Superhighway" (Internet). His stiff, "Wooden Indian" style came off as pompous on the campaign trail, giving Bush's persona a boost as it could have been portrayed as bumbling if he had been up against a natural born campaigner such as Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan.In the game of politics as played in the US, Gore had everything to lose and Bush had everything to gain. Gore had to rise and exceed expectations while Bush merely had to live up to lowered expectations to rise above them and gain credence, and he did, beginning with the first debate. Going into the first debate, pundits expected the better-spoken Gore to eviscerate the syntactically challenged Bush (whose intelligence they disparaged), but it did not happen. Gore was haughty, and since Bush held his own, the governor of Texas was adjudged the winner. From there to the end of the campaign, Gore could never consolidate his early lead, which slipped away.On election day, Bush and Gore were locked in a dead heat. In the closest election in a century, it all came down to a matter of 537 votes in Florida. Out of the nearly six million votes cast in the Sunshine State (5,861,785 total, only 36,742 of which were won by third party candidates), Bush won by a margin representing 0.0087%. That's less than nine one-thousandths of a percentage point.After a long drawn-out process involving recounts and court challenges, Bush took the oath of office on January 20, 2001 and won re-election in November 2004 to become the first son of a president to win two terms in office.

44- Barack Obama

"Americans still believe in an America where anything's possible - they just don't think their leaders do"

Quick Facts:

Born: August 4th, 1961

Terms: 1st: 2009- Present

Party Affiliation: Democratic



Barack Obama was born to a white American mother, Ann Dunham, and a black Kenyan father, Barack Obama, Sr., who were both young college students at the University of Hawaii. When his father left for Harvard, she and Barack stayed behind, and his father ultimately returned alone to Kenya, where he worked as a government economist. Barack's mother remarried an Indonesian oil manager and moved to Jakarta when Barack was six. He later recounted Indonesia as simultaneously lush and a harrowing exposure to tropical poverty. He returned to Hawaii, where he was brought up largely by his grandparents. The family lived in a small apartment - his grandfather was a furniture salesman and an unsuccessful insurance agent and his grandmother worked in a bank - but Barack managed to get into Punahou School, Hawaii's top prep academy. His father wrote to him regularly but, though he traveled around the world on official business for Kenya, he visited only once, when Barack was ten.Obama attended Columbia University, but found New York's racial tension inescapable. He became a community organizer for a small Chicago church-based group for three years, helping poor South Side residents cope with a wave of plant closings. He then attended Harvard Law School, and in 1990 became the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. He turned down a prestigious judicial clerkship, choosing instead to practice civil-rights law back in Chicago, representing victims of housing and employment discrimination and working on voting-rights legislation. He also began teaching at the University of Chicago Law School. Eventually he ran as a Democrat for the state senate seat from his district, which included both Hyde Park and some of the poorest ghettos on the South Side, and won.In 2004 Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Democrat, representing Illinois, and gained national attention by giving a rousing and well-received keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. In 2008 he ran for president as a democrat and won. He is set to become the 44th president of the Unites States and the first African-American ever elected to that position