Black History Month: IL's class III U.S. Senate seat

For Black History Month I wanted to further reference this "long story" that was noted in a post about Rod Blagojevich who served as Governor of Illinois from 2003 to 2009 the first and only governor of this state to have been impeached and removed from office. Also another in a line of governors who have ran afoul of the law and to have served time in prison.

However before talking about this long story I have to start with the U.S. Senate. The seat currently held by Tammy Duckworth who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016 defeating the Republican incumbent Mark Kirk is considered a class III senate seat. The U.S. Constitution sets up senate elections in three classes and every two years each class will have their seats up for election every year. For example class I was elected in 2018, class II was elected in 2020, and finally class three is up this year 2022.

So Duckworth's class III senate seat is an historic one since three of her predecessors were Black. And to discuss this we must go back all the way to 1992 which was when the first Black woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate - Carol Moseley Braun. I believe 1992 was called the year of the woman when a number of women got elected to the U.S. Senate at that point of time and she was one of them. 

U.S. Senate

In 1992 she defeated incumbent U.S. Senator Alan Dixon in the Democratic primary. And in the general election she defeated her Republican opponent diplomat Rich Williamson.

She wasn't just the first Black woman to go to the U.S. Senate she was the first Black person to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate. Before he election to the U.S. Senate she had been the Cook County Recorder of Deeds. She lost her bid for re-election in 1998 to Republican Peter Fitzgerald who served his six year term and decided not to stand for re-election in 2004. And that leads to the next historic footnote.

Sen. Fitzgerald's successor is a guy you should already know about, his name is Barack Obama - yeah this launched him to an even bigger place. Before being elected to the U.S. Senate Obama was a member of the Illinois State Senate and during the 2004 US Senate race gave the keynote address to the Democratic Nat'l Convention. People remembered that speech and it took him much further in 2008 when he was elected President of the United States. [VIDEO]

He held his senate seat until November 2008, and thus didn't serve his full six-year term.

That means we got to fill the last roughly two years of his term and this is where Rod Blagojevich comes in. Gov. Blagojevich had been arrested in early December 2008 in the early morning at his home on the north side of Chicago by the FBI. He was accused of corruption and it caused a number of political issues that led to him eventually being removed from office.

Here's the press conference where Gov. Blagojevich appointed Roland Burris to Obama's vacated Senate seat. [VIDEO]

However, before that occurred he made an appointment to Obama's former Senate seat. That appointment was Roland Burris. Because Blagojevich made this appointment U.S. Sen. Burris' attempt to sit in the Senate was controversial. It was even lampooned on SNL when it happened. [VIDEO]

And yes that is Kenan Thompson formerly of the Nickelodeon TV series Keenan & Kel who performed as Sen. Roland Burris.

Before accepting this U.S. Senate appointment Roland Burris had been in private life. He had one last run for Governor of Illinois in 2002 after running into both 1994 and 1998. He had also run as an independent for Mayor of Chicago in 1995. He was formerly the Attorney General and Comptroller for Illinois. He served in the Senate from January 2009 to November 2010.

In November 2010, Illinois voters had to decide not only who would hold this class III seat for the coming 6 year term starting in 2011. They now also had to vote on who would finish the unexpired term of now President Obama. Republican Mark Kirk would defeat Democrat and outgoing IL state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias - you might have heard he's running for IL Secretary of State in 2022 - in a very close election. Sen. Kirk would finish the unexpired term of Obama which was held by Burris starting on Nov. 29, 2010 and would begin his own full six year term on Jan. 3, 2011.

 

Of course let's go full circle in 2016 Mark Kirk would lose his U.S. Senate seat to Tammy Duckworth. She previously was a member of the U.S House of Representatives before moving onto the U.S. Senate. She is a war veteran and the first female double-amputee to serve in Congress. She also served as Director of Veteran Affairs in Illinois from 2006 to 2009 and was the Assistant Secretary of Public and Intergovernmental Affairs for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs from 2009 to 2011 when she was elected as a U.S. Representative. Also one distinction is that she was also the first Thai-American to serve in Congress.

Also another going full circle moment we started all the way in 1992 with an election and thirty years later another for this same seat.