The Daily Background
| Obama to step down from the Senate on Sunday; Who will fill his seat?
by Arlen Parsa
Word just got around that President-elect Obama has opted to resign his Senate seat this Sunday, November 16th. Although this isn’t a controversial thing at all and nobody will complain or laud him for it, it does put pressure for Illinois’ immensely unpopular governor Rod Blagojevich (D) to choose a successor to fill out the end of his term.
The local buzz here in Chicago is that there will be pressure on Blago to appoint another African American to the seat since with Obama leaving the Senate, it will otherwise go back to being an almost all white body (there are three Hispanic senators and two Asian-American senators, but no other African Americans in the upper chamber). Several names have been mentioned as possible candidates, including Illinois Senate President Emil Jones, Rep Jesse Jackson Jr and State Sen Kwame Raoul (the latter of which was actually appointed to Obama’s state senate seat in 2004 after he left for the US senate; I also interviewed him recently for a documentary I’m working on).
Additionally, word has it that Blagojevich may be making his decision based on who he thinks will work the hardest to help him get re-elected in 2010. As he’s consistently ranked the least popular governor in the country (and is even more unpopular than George W Bush here), that’s quite a tall order.
