among other things: US Senator from Illinois, Illinois State Senator
Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, succeeding State Senator Alice Palmer as Senator from Illinois's 13th District. Obama was sworn in as a US senator (for the state of Illinois) on January 3, 2005.
Mississippi was the 20th state. Illinois was the 21st. Alabama was the 22nd.
Indiana became the 19th State in 1816 and Illinois became the 21st State in 1818.
Before becoming a state in the Union, Illinois was known as the Illinois Territory, which was established in 1809. The name "Illinois" itself is derived from the Native American Illinois tribe. The territory was officially admitted to the Union as the 21st state on December 3, 1818.
Before he was president, Barack Obama served as a US Senator from the state of Illinois. Before that, he was an Illinois state senator for three terms. He was also a professor of law at the University of Chicago, and he worked as a lawyer for a small Chicago law firm specializing in civil rights cases.
He was never the governor of Illinois. He was in the Illinois state senate for three terms, and then he became a U.S. senator.
Before president, Barack Obama was a U.S. Senator from Illinois.
He was the junior senator from Illinois.
Corn, wheat, and bad politics
There are three: the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Wabash.
He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004