Obama's Past Political Gamesmanship

While Barack Obama has based much of his presidential campaign on a rejection of politics as usual, his 1996 campaign for state senate in Illinois had deep roots in that old political style he now fights against.

The Detroit Free Press has a piece up today on how Obama directed his staff members to file objections to the nominating petitions of all four of his Democratic primary challengers during the 1996 campaign. Obama's people were successful in clearing the field and all four rivals, including the incumbent who was considered an elder stateswoman of Chicago politics, were removed from the ballot.

In the piece, Obama defends his campaign's actions as necessary to protect the integrity of the primary process. Quote:

"I gave some thought to ... should people be on the ballot even if they didn't meet the requirements," he said. "My conclusion was that, if you couldn't run a successful petition drive, then that raised questions in terms of how effective a representative you were going to be."

Read the whole piece [here].