Election Day 2008
Chicago. Grant Park. Election Day. Our behind-the-scenes coverage
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On the Way
Sitting on a small campaign jet during Barack Obama’s 2004 race for the U.S. Senate, I found myself lost in thought. The candidate, dressed in a crisp white shirt and striped tie, sat a few feet in front of me and to the right. I was staring ahead without realizing that I was looking directly at Obama himself, until the aspiring U.S. senator interrupted my rambling thoughts: “Hey, Mendell, what are you looking at?” he asked with a puzzled look…
From the Outside In
I didn’t make it into the media pen, and I didn’t get to the party I was supposed to cover in time, so, at about 9:30 p.m., my election night coverage was looking pretty skimpy. Somehow, in all the crowds that were wandering around downtown, I managed to hook up with a few friends on Michigan Avenue, and we decided—wholeheartedly and foolishly—to cut to the center of the “overflow,” that is, the tens of thousands of people who were loitering on the eastern end of Grant Park looking at Jumbotrons and stepping on each other’s feet…
The Obama Bounce
Will Obama create a coattail effect for the rest of the Democratic ticket in Illinois?
Outside Influence
The money funding Illinois candidates for the U.S. House doesn’t all come from Illinois
Contributors
Debra Pickett, Robert Buscemi, K. Tighe, Cornelia Maude Spelman, John Kenzie
Feedback
In November letters: readers vs. Daley vs. Daley and a South Side view
The Worry
In the formative stages of Barack Obama’s fame, no topic would make him or his aides more uncomfortable than his personal safety. When I first broached the subject, in July 2004, it was uncharted territory for the then-candidate for the U.S. Senate. Obama had just returned from the Democratic National Convention in Boston, where he had catapulted overnight into the zeitgest of Democrats across the country with his stirring keynote address…
Derrick Rose's Leap from Inner-City Baller to the NBA
THE AIR UP THERE: His story starts in Englewood, one of Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhoods, where, as an athletic prodigy, he was shielded from harm
Portrait of a Lady
Between the world wars, a beautiful, artistic woman named Bobsy Goodspeed stood at the heart of Chicago’s social and cultural scenes. Now, prompted by a salacious if glancing remark in a recent book, this forgotten woman re-emerges and opens the door on a vanished era peopled by painters and pianists, plutocrats and politicians—and an irresistible force named Gertrude Stein