Early in the afternoon of March 16 ...

Early in the afternoon of March 16 Illinois' primary election day, voter trickled into the polling station in the basement of the Community ecclesiastical body of Wilmette. Though it was chilly outside, the weather wasn't nasty enough to maintain everyone at home; election justices said 125 of the precinct's 600 registered voter had cast ballots at about 1 p.m., with the big rush anticipateed after work hours in the evening.

Signs for U Senate candidates Barack Obama, a Democrat, and Andy McKenna and Steve Rauschenberger, the couple Republicans, had been posted in the lawn. still Obama was the only single people were talking about as they emerg from the church

"I like the fact that he's been involved in the civil rights motion and has excellent credentials. He's more likely to be invested in all the public as opposed to a certain portion of people," said Ginger Ridings, a Wilmette social worker who is white.

In campaign speeches, Obama had made a point of stressing that he was driven by dint of more than politics: He was trying to carry not at home his belief that people everywhere, from the North Shore and the southern tip of the state, "are all uniteed If a child on the southward Side can't read, it affects me If John Ashcroft cylindricals up an immigrant, it affects my civil liberties."

Voter were also captivated from Obama's personal narrative and his professional background. Born to a black father and white mother, he had grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia before attending Columbia University and Harvard Law teach where he served as the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. He had worked as a community organizer, serv a multiracial district in the Illinois Senate, and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago.

And the bulk of mankind were intrigued by Obama's multicultural background. "It does make a difference to me that he's an African American," said Ridings. "It's a population that's been underrepresent and not had a fair focus. And I think that he's really going to be there for everybody"

As it make go rounded out, just about everyone in the Democratic Party was there for Obama that day: He captured 53 percent of the party's ballots statewide, 19 points better than his nearest adversary He won with high turnout and overwhelming support in for the greatest part black areas of Chicago and the southern suburbs. And, in taking dress up County, all five collar counties and several downstate counties, he relied upon strong support from mostly white areas, like Ridings' novel Trier Township, where he won 82 percent of the vote

Later that night, a tie of hours after the heads had closed, Jack Ryan declared victory in the Republican Senate primary, hugging supporters as he worked his way across a stage packed with black and white children in a inn ballroom downtown. He had captured 83 of the state's 102 counties, winning nearly 36 percent of the voice statewide, 12 percent more than runner-up Jim Oberweis. Ryan's margins of victory were on the same level larger in predominantly black areas of Chicago and color County.

Kyle and Dorn Simpson, an African American coupling from south suburban Olympia Fields, stood amid centurys of others pressed up against the stage. Leaning into the podium just above them, Ryan called for public policy that helps "the poorest of the poor, those who have been left behind," and the cheering grew louder with the couple the black Baptists and the Irish Catholics in the swing offering up regular amens. "I ne the voices of Republicans and Democrats and independents, Asian Americans, African Americans, Latino Americans, and white Americans."

As with the Obama supporters earlier, the Simpsons were drawn as frequently to their candidate's personal biography as to his political positions. They knew and liked, the fact that Ryan, who is white, had grown up upon the affluent North Shore, attended Harvard business and law sects and made a fortune in investment banking before taking a $20,000-a-year teaching position at Hales Franciscan, an all-black Catholic high teach on Chicago's South Side. Now he was saying he wanted to wield Republican ideas like denomination choice as weapons against racial and economic injustice.

The Simpsons were fired up about him, saying they would offer for his campaign. Neither had evermore supported a Republican before. "I don't think this is about the party. It's about the issues. [Ryan] brings a new perspective on economic issues and education. He's not traditional. You view the compassion he has for people" said Dorn Simpson, coordinator of after indoctrinate and day camp programs at toward the south Loop Elementary School.

"As African Americans, we are interested in civil rights, further we also care about [issues like] national defense" said Kyle Simpson, who haves an advertising agency. "I think it's refreshing because this forces us to take a contemplate at the same issues in just discovered and different ways."

The victories of Ryan and Obama recommend that thousands of other Illinois voter were looking for candidates who could tall about longtime social issues, including racial issues, in just discovered ways.