 Biography of Barack Obama
(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-11-06 07:41 Age: 47 Birthdate: Aug 4, 1961 Birthplace: Honolulu, Hawaii Education: Columbia University; Harvard Law School Wife: Michelle Robinson Children: Two daughters Religious affiliation: United Church of Christ
Family: Barack Obama was born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and a white American mother. His father, Barack Obama Sr, married his mother, Ann Dunham, while studying at the University of Hawaii. The couple separated two years after Obama was born. His father ultimately returned to Kenya, where he became a noted economist. He died in a car accident in 1982. Obama's mother's second marriage was to an Indonesian man named Lolo Soetoro. The family moved to Indonesia and Obama remained there until he was 10 when he moved back to Hawaii and lived with his grandparents while studying on a scholarship at the elite Punahou Academy. He has seven half brothers and sisters in Kenya from his father's other marriages, and a half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, from his mother's second marriage. Career: After finishing college in 1983, Obama worked for a New York financial consultant and a consumer organization. He landed a job in Chicago in 1985 as an organizer for Developing Communities Project, a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods.
Three years later, Obama left to go to Harvard Law School, where he became the first black president of the law review. He worked as a summer associate at the Sidley Austin law firm in Chicago, where he met his future wife. After graduation from Harvard in 1991, Obama practiced civil rights law at a small firm in Chicago, then became a lecturer in constitutional law at the University of Chicago in 1993. Elective office: Obama won a seat in the Illinois state Senate in 1996. During his time in the legislature, he worked on welfare and ethics legislation, as well as a measure requiring electronic recording of police interrogations and confessions in homicide investigations. Obama won a heavily contested US Senate seat in 2004, carrying 53 percent of the Democratic primary vote in an eight-candidate race. He easily won the general election. In the Senate he compiled a liberal voting record, but was one of the few Democrats to back a measure on class-action lawsuits. He opposed the appointment of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito to the US Supreme Court. The nonpartisan National Journal ranked him as the most liberal member of the Senate early this year based on his voting record in 2007. He was ranked 10th most liberal in 2006 and 16th most liberal in 2005. Agencies (China Daily 11/06/2008 page7) |
