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I meant to link to this story when I originally read the Ryan Lizza Obama profile, but forgot. Still a helluva story, though. For his Illinois State Senate seat, Obama edged out a more senior legislator named Alice Palmer. Palmer had once occupied the district, then left to run for Congress, then that didn't work out, then she wanted her seat back, but Obama wouldn't relinquish it, and he got her kicked off the ballot by questioning her signatures. Some of her colleagues were not pleased. And they told Obama so on the floor of the legislature. When Obama rose to offer one of his first pieces of legislation in the body, a modest bill meant to create a directory of community college graduates for local businesses, this exchange ensued with Ricky Hendon, a Senator from Chicago's West Side:
HENDON: Senator, could you correctly pronounce your name for me? I’m having a little trouble with it.Yikes. Later, Hendon and Obama almost got into a fistfight on the floor of the Senate. According to Lizza, this will all be further detailed when Hendon releases his upcoming book, Black Enough, White Enough: The Obama Dilemma.
OBAMA: Obama.
HENDON: Is that Irish?
OBAMA: It will be when I run countywide.
HENDON: That was a good joke, but this bill’s still going to die. This directory, would that have those 1-800 sex line numbers in this directory?
OBAMA: I apologize. I wasn’t paying Senator Hendon any attention.
HENDON: Well, clearly, as poorly as this legislation is drafted, you didn’t pay it much attention either. My question was: Are the 1-800 sex line numbers going to be in this directory?
OBAMA: Not—not—basically this idea comes out of the South Side community colleges. I don’t know what you’re doing on the West Side community colleges. But we probably won’t be including that in our directory for the students.
HENDON: . . . Let me just say this, and to the bill: I seem to remember a very lovely Senator by the name of Palmer—much easier to pronounce than Obama—and she always had cookies and nice things to say, and you don’t have anything to give us around your desk. How do you expect to get votes? And—and you don’t even wear nice perfume like Senator Palmer did. . . . I’m missing Senator Palmer because of these weak replacements with these tired bills that makes absolutely no sense. I . . . I definitely urge a No vote. Whatever your name is.
