Another notable action of his term was a strict new ethics law. When campaigning for re-election in 2006, Blagojevich said that if his ethics law had existed when former governor George Ryan had been in office, Ryan's corruption might not have occurred. Blagojevich also signed a comprehensive death penalty reform bill that was written by then-Senator Barack Obama and the late U.S. Senator Paul M. Simon. Organized labor and African Americans were Blagojevich's staunchest political supporters. In 2008, he told a group of African-Americans that he sometimes considered himself the first African American governor of Illinois.