Obama or Clinton? It’s a tough choice for some

updated 3:28 p.m. ET March 8, 2007

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Most state leaders would consider Illinois’ Democratic powerbrokers lucky to have two homegrown presidential candidates vying for the top of their party’s ticket.

Now comes the hard part—choosing whether to back rising political star and local hero Barack Obama, or whether to get behind a trusted ally and political veteran with strong ties to the state, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Obama and Clinton are heavily courting Prairie State insiders who can deliver money and votes for their presidential campaigns, especially in Chicago—one of a half dozen of the nation’s top locales for raising political money.

“A lot of people are having a real hard time trying to decide,” said Kevin O’Keefe, a Chicago attorney who has known Clinton for decades. “They love their homestate senator, but they know Senator Clinton has been around longer.”

An Illiniois senator, Obama was raised in Hawaii, but settled in Chicago after college and worked as a community organizer. He left to get a law degree from Harvard, but returned to practice civil rights law and launch a political career.

Clinton, now a New York senator, grew up in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, a largely Republican enclave where she was a Goldwater Girl. But her exposure to progressive politics goes back at least to her teens, when she attended a speech by Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago. Her husband, Bill Clinton, was nominated for a second presidential term at Democrats’ 1996 convention in the Windy City.

Both candidates are exploiting their local ties as fully as possible.

Obama, Clinton and other 2008 contenders face huge pressure to prove their viability by raising money quickly. Political analysts estimate the candidates will have to raise $100 million each this year to be competitive in next year’s primaries and caucuses. That requires the aid of supporters with networks of friends and associates willing to make donations.

‘A desire, an intent’
Many of the state’s top Democratic officials and fundraisers had been expected to back Clinton, but Obama’s entry into the race changed that.

Mike Bauer, for example, decided to use his years of fundraising experience and contacts in Chicago’s gay community to raise money for Obama. He helped with Obama’s first fundraiser after the campaign’s official launch last month—a huge Chicago event that Bauer says was intended to make a statement.

“Clearly there was a desire, an intent, by the Obama campaign to hit the ground first in Barack’s hometown,” he said. “It was important, both for financial reasons and psychological reasons, to show that he has tremendous support from the people who know him the best.”

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