Young Mr. Obama - By Edward McClelland Page 0,66

find a way to help Obama in return.

During the congressional campaign, Obama had been caricatured as an ineffectual state senator, a man so consumed with his own ambition, so eager to use Springfield as a stepladder to Washington, that he didn’t bother to learn the ins and outs of legislating. Despite his success with welfare reform and child support, Obama was still seen as an idealist who thought cloakroom negotiations were beneath his dignity.

When Obama returned to the capitol, he began taking his work—and his colleagues—more seriously. Before, he’d been a résumé in search of an office. Now he was determined to make a name for himself on issues important to his urban district. Some senators thought that Obama had been humbled by his loss to Rush. Donne Trotter didn’t quite see it that way. He had to admit his fellow senator was working harder, but humble? Barack Obama? Obama was a competitor, and competitors don’t like to lose. The once-impatient young man immersed himself in the legislative process, learning the “get-along” qualities necessary to pass a bill. No longer a loner, Obama was taking advice from colleagues he’d ignored during his first four years.

Obama, Trotter, and Rickey Hendon cosponsored a racial profiling bill that would have required police to record the race, age, and gender of every driver they pulled over. (It never got out of the Judiciary Committee.) Obama also argued, unsuccessfully, against a bill that made gangbangers eligible for the death penalty if they committed a murder as part of gang activity. It’s never popular to look as though you’re sticking up for the Vice Lords, so Obama voted “present” on the bill, but only after insinuating it was racially motivated.

“I’m concerned about us targeting particular neighborhoods or particular types of individuals for enhancements, as opposed to others,” he said on the senate floor.

The bill was more or less symbolic. Governor Ryan had declared a moratorium on the death penalty after thirteen death row prisoners—one more than the state had executed since 1976—were proven innocent. Unlike many black legislators, Obama never declared himself an opponent of capital punishment, but he supported Ryan’s moratorium, and he always supported death penalty reform, such as allowing DNA evidence to review cases.

Obama did pass two women’s health bills. One required all hospitals to tell rape victims about the morning-after pill. (It passed after the sponsors made an exception for Catholic hospitals, who didn’t have to provide the information if the victim was ovulating.) He also passed a bill expanding Medicaid to cover breast and cervical cancer screening.

But Obama’s biggest success in the year after the congressional race was an affordable-housing bill that ended up exposing his relationships with South Side developers and slumlords. Having worked in Altgeld Gardens, Obama saw the folly of housing projects: how they corralled the poor into isolated communities where joblessness, drug dealing, and shootings became ways of life, passed on from one generation to the next. Obama believed private developers could do a better job of managing low-income apartments than the Chicago Housing Authority. The profit motive made them superior landlords, and their buildings were more likely to be located in middle-class neighborhoods.

Obama’s bill, which he sponsored with William Peterson, a suburban Republican, gave a 50-percent tax credit to donations toward developing affordable housing, setting aside $13 million a year from the state’s coffers.

Throughout his career in Chicago, Obama took hundreds of thousands of dollars from developers. Some, like Tony Rezko and Allison Davis, were guilty of building low-cost apartments that almost instantly deteriorated into slums: rat haunted, freezing in winter, occupied by squatters and drug dealers.

As an associate at Davis, Miner, Obama had worked with nonprofit groups that helped developers win government grants to build affordable housing. Among them was the Woodlawn Preservative and Investment Co., which was headed by Bishop Arthur Brazier, a Saul Alinsky protégé and influential black pastor who preached on television every Sunday morning. Brazier’s group partnered with Rezko in redeveloping slum properties. Rezko was so closely associated with Davis, Miner that Allison Davis eventually left the law firm to go into the real estate business with him. In all, Davis, Miner represented three community groups in partnership with Rezko’s company, Rezmar Inc. Through those groups, the firm helped Rezko obtain $43 million in government funds. Obama did only five hours of legal work for Rezko, under the supervision of more experienced attorneys, but he had met the developer even before joining the firm.

During his rise through Illinois politics, it was