Obama's Chicago roots offer hints of his politics

By Andrew Stern

CHICAGO (Reuters) - As a young black community organizer and later amid the rough-and-tumble of local Chicago politics, Barack Obama learned his first political lessons while dreaming of bigger things.

Obama, now a 46-year-old first-term U.S. senator from Illinois who would be the first black president, heads into Super Tuesday's slate of 22 Democratic state primaries and caucuses in a tight race with Hillary Clinton to become the party's presidential nominee.

The building blocks of Obama's support are found in Chicago's Hyde Park-Kenwood neighborhood, a bastion of liberal politics that is home to the University of Chicago and Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow-PUSH civil rights organization.

"Barack built his career in Hyde Park, which is a community that is very progressive, very open-minded," said John Rogers, Jr., one of several black Chicago entrepreneurs backing Obama.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Danny Davis of Chicago said the progressive Obama began drawing attention for his success in forging alliances with Republicans after his election to the Illinois legislature in 1996.

When Obama sought his support for the 2004 U.S. senate race, Davis was "delighted to hear his hopes and aspirations ... (but) I didn't expect him to win so overwhelmingly."

Later, Obama surprised again by building a presidential campaign apparatus that has raised more than $130 million from an unprecedented 650,000 donors. Chicago billionaire Penny Pritzker is the campaign's national finance chairman.

The Hawaii-born Obama's emergence in Chicago, where his wife, Michelle, is from, is a good fit because of the city's history as an incubator of black-owned business and culture, DePaul University journalism professor Laura Washington said.

NOT FROM GHETTO

As a candidate of mixed race who grew up among whites rather than poor blacks -- he is the son of a white mother and a black Kenyan father and spent much of his childhood in Hawaii -- Obama represents a departure from the "old school of African-American politics: the preacher, the civil rights leader," Washington said.

For advice, Obama sought out older Democrats like former Congressman Abner Mikva and tapped ties at the University of Chicago, where he taught constitutional law. Obama's economic advisor is business school professor Austan Goolsbee, who subscribes to a "data-driven" approach to problems, popularized in the book "Freakonomics" co-written by a colleague.

Goolsbee said Obama's chief domestic goal is to relieve the financial squeeze on everyday Americans. He also wants to an "iPod" government that is as easy to use as the portable listening device.

"In some ways it comes from his biographical background ... as a community organizer trying to help people get access to the resources they were entitled to," he said.

Those who have known him for a while say the affable Obama puts them personally at ease. During the campaign, he has shown a rare ability to mesmerize larger audiences. One critic has described Obama as a neutral, "Rorschach candidate" upon whom people project their own aspirations.

In Hyde Park, Obama's stately $1.65 million, three-story brick home set among mansions is bordered on one side by an impenetrable row of pine trees. It was purchased shortly after his electrifying speech at the 2004 Democratic party convention that first brought him to national prominence and helped his two books become best-sellers.