Illinois Senate elections of Barack Obama election, Democratic Party candidate Obama was elected state senator for the 13th District with 48,592 votes (82.15%); Harold Washington Party candidate David Whitehead received 7,461 votes (12.61%); and Republican Party candidate Rosette Caldwell Peyton received 3,091 votes (5.22%). The citywide turnout of 63% was the record low for a presidential general election in Chicago and was down from 74.5% in 1992. The 1996 election was the last in Illinois to allow straight-ticket voting. On January 8, 1997, Obama was sworn in for a two-year term as state senator for the 13th District, which was then a T-shaped district that spanned
Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories I would do in the first debate is offer my birth certificate, so we can get that off the table." Previously on "Good Morning America", when asked about President Obama's origins, she replied, "Well, that isn't for me to state. That's for the president to state." On May 12, 2012, Mike Coffman, a congressman running for re-election in the Sixth Congressional District of Colorado, addressed a Republican fund-raising event in Elbert County. Coffman stated that he did not know where President Barack Obama was born. Coffman went on to say of Obama that "in his heart, he's not an American.