Being elected to the U.S. Senate as the Illinois and Cook County Democratic Party Daley Machine's representative in the U.S. Senate can apparently be a pretty lucrative gig. As Chicago Tribune reporter David Mendell noted in his 2007 book Obama: From Promise To Power, following his election to the U.S. Senate in 2004, Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack "No Experience" Obama and his wife, then-University of Chicago Hospitals Vice-President Michelle Robinson Obama, purchased a mansion in 2005 for more than $1.6 million.
According to the Obama: From Promise To Power book:
"Purchasing a piece of property right next door, on the very same day, had been the wife of Antoin `Tony' Rezko, an old friend and financial contributor of Obama's who had been indicted just months before on federal fraud charges. Reporters for the Tribune, where the story broke, also found that Obama and Rezko's wife engaged in a series of financial transactions to redivide the properties and improve their parcels. The relationship between Rezko and Obama went back twenty years. Obama had met him when Obama was in law school and Rezko's development partners had tried to hire him. At his north suburban home, Rezko had hosted a fund-raiser for Obama in 2003 that helped fund early parts of his Senate candidacy. Since then, Rezko had been a regular contributor to Obama's campaigns. The two had also been social friends, with the Rezkos dining out a few times a year with the Obamas."
The wife of 2008 Democratic Party presidential candidate Obama, the daughter of a Cook County Democratic Party Precinct Captain and a former Assistant to the Democratic Mayor of Chicago, apparently was making a lot of money each year from Chicago's failing health care system. As the University of Chicago Hospitals Vice-President, Michelle Robinson Obama apparently took home an annual salary of over $250,000 per year during the early 21st-century.
Next: Wiretapping in Chicago Historically Under Illinois Dem Rule
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