Rising star crushes his anti-gay opponent
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The name might be unfamiliar, but it is probably worth remembering: Barack Obama of Illinois has emerged as a new US senator and future Democrat star.
Mr Obama, an African American graduate of the Harvard Law School, won his state's Senate seat with an estimated 76 per cent of the vote.
He is only the third black person elected to the Senate. He destroyed his Republican opponent, Alan Keyes, a conservative talk show host who is also black, but who does not live in Illinois.
Mr Keyes is from the state of Maryland, but that was not his only political handicap.
Earlier this year, Mr Keyes said the children of gay parents might unwittingly commit incest as adults, saying that many did not know their genetic heritage.
At the Republican convention in New York in September, Mr Keyes said the homosexual lifestyle was "based simply on the premise of selfish hedonism.
When asked if Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, was a selfish hedonist, he said: "Of course she is."
Mr Obama attacked those remarks as homophobic and malicious. His victory was more, however, than a vote against Mr Keyes. He impressed many people with a passionate speech at the Democratic Party's convention in Boston in July.
Mr Obama is the son of a black Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas.
The couple divorced when Mr Obama was an infant. He saw his father, who is now dead, only once after that. Mr Obama, 43, lived in Indonesia for four years as a boy when his mother married again. His time there included schooling in the Bible and the Koran. As a youth, he experimented with cocaine and other drugs. He is now a committed Christian.
His wife, Michelle, introduced her husband to cheering supporters, saying: "He's my husband, my honey, my man, my babies' daddy, and he will serve you well."
Mr Obama thanked his family, his pastor and his church.
He succeeds a Republican, Peter Fitzgerald, who is retiring.
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