The Chicago Tribune published a scathing editorial, calling him "[t]he GOP's rent-a-senator" and sarcastically listing basic facts about local geography for a candidate they suspected had no familiarity with the area: "Keyes may have noticed a large body of water as he flew into O'Hare. Obama didn't run against Jack Ryan until 2004 in the U.S. senate race. Kucinich did not leave the race officially until July. The assertion about WMD was hotly advanced by the Bush administration from the beginning, but other major powers including China, France, Germany, and Russia remained unconvinced that Iraq was a threat and refused to allow passage of a UN Security Council resolution to authorize the use of force. And we'll spoil the surprise: You can't even see across it. And she didn't have valid signatures on her petition; her fault for waiting til the last minute to decide to run.) Bush presented himself as a decisive leader and attacked Kerry as a "flip-flopper", while Kerry criticized Bush's conduct of the Iraq War. Obama formally announced his candidacy on January 21, 2003,[9] Bush had established a lead of around 130,000 votes but the Democrats pointed to provisional ballots that had yet to be counted, initially reported to number as high as 200,000. Another major component of Edwards's message was to be able to reinstate fiscal responsibility. GOP frontrunner Jack Ryan had divorced actress Jeri Ryan in 1999, and the records of the divorce were sealed at their mutual request. How far can Barack Obama go? By the January 2004 Iowa caucuses, the field had dwindled down to nine candidates, as Bob Graham had dropped out of the race. Five states saw every county vote for one candidate: Bush won every county in Utah and Oklahoma while Kerry won every county in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Hawaii. [38], Race became an issue in the contest between the two black candidates when Keyes claimed that he, not Obama, was the true "African-American". Originally heralded as an antiwar general, he stumbled in the first few days of his candidacy. The following week, Edwards won in South Carolina and nearly beat Clark in Oklahoma. This is the first time a candidate from either party won the presidency without carrying a single Northeastern state. Obama won by 43%, the largest margin of victory in the state history of U.S. Senate elections, and served in the Senate for four years until he was elected President in 2008. [17][18] The Democratic primary election, including seven candidates who combined to spend over $46 million, was the most expensive U.S. Senate primary election in history. [25] The tactic backfired when many people, including Ryan's supporters, criticized this activity. Following his official nomination at the Convention, Kerry received only a small bounce in the polls and remained "neck and neck" with Bush. [84] The OSCE is not affiliated with the United Nations. "[36] In a similar vein, The New York Times published an editorial decrying "the rank hypocrisy", recalling that four years earlier, Keyes had attacked Hillary Clinton for establishing residency in New York for the first time only two months before announcing her U.S. Senate candidacy in that state. He was also a proponent of school choice and supported vouchers for private school students. [41], ★Maine and Nebraska each allow for their electoral votes to be split between candidates. As a result of the GOP and Democratic primaries, Democrat Barack Obama was pitted against Republican Jack Ryan. We Can Help—The Reader's Guide to the Big Showdown", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2004_United_States_Senate_election_in_Illinois&oldid=985354792, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 25 October 2020, at 13:40. At the start of Keyes' candidacy in August, Keyes had 24% support in the polls. ), Source: CNN exit poll (13,660 surveyed)[53]. [83] The report reads: "The November 2, 2004 elections in the United States mostly met the OSCE commitments included in the 1990 Copenhagen Document. During the debate, no Senator argued that the outcome of the election should be changed by either court challenge or revote. Incumbent Republican U.S. [20] Both Ryan and his wife agreed to make their divorce records public, but not make the child custody records public, claiming that the custody records could be harmful to their son if released. Keyes replied, "Of course I've conceded the race. Despite the burst of enthusiasm for Clark in late 2003, Dean maintained a strong lead in the polls for the latter half of the year. [80] In September 2004 the OSCE issued a report on U.S. electoral processes[81][82] and the election final report. Senators Kerry and Edwards were formally nominated by the Democratic Party at the convention. Note also: Official Federal Election Commission Report, with the latest, most final, and complete vote totals available. Jeff Dean, a former senior vice-president of Global Election Systems when it was bought by Diebold, had previously been convicted of 23 counts of felony theft in the first degree. There were 2,509 total delegates to the 2004 Republican National Convention, of which 650 were so-called "superdelegates" who were not bound by any particular state's primary or caucus votes and could change their votes at any time. history.[15]. (a) One faithless elector from Minnesota cast an electoral vote for John Edwards (written as John Ewards) for president. A poll released by the Des Moines Register days before the caucus was held showed Dean and Gephardt had lost all of their lead in Iowa. Global Election Systems, which was purchased by Diebold Election Systems and developed the core technology behind the company's voting machines and voter registration system, employed five convicted felons as consultants and developers. In June 2003, Howard Dean aired the first television advertising of the 2004 campaign, spending more than $300,000. [38], Race became an issue in the contest between the two black candidates when Keyes claimed that he, not Obama, was the true "African-American". He said, "We're going to run a campaign that will move this country forward, not back.". The DNC's website acknowledged him as the party's nominee at that time, four and a half months prior to the Convention. Electoral College in 2004 than in 2000, since the number of electors allotted to each state is equal to the sum of the number of Senators and Representatives from that state. Faced with this announcement, John Kerry conceded defeat. and three weeks later popular Republican former Governor Jim Edgar declined to run,[13] leading to wide open Democratic and Republican primary races with 15 candidates, including 7 millionaires[14] Besides the impact of coming in third, Dean was further hurt by a speech that he gave while at a post-caucus rally. [26] On March 29, 2004, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider ruled that several of the Ryans' divorce records should be opened to the public, and ruled that a court-appointed referee would later decide which custody files should remain sealed to protect the interests of Ryan's young child. [39][40], Obama ran the most successful Senate campaign in 2004, and was so far ahead in polls that he soon began to campaign outside of Illinois in support of other Democratic candidates. States where margin of victory was under 1% (22 electoral votes): States where margin of victory was more than 1% but less than 5% (93 electoral votes): States where margin of victory was more than 5% but less than 10% (149 electoral votes): Bush received 62,040,610 popular votes compared to Kerry's 59,028,444. First, as a native of Maryland, he had almost no ties to Illinois. Incumbent President George W. Bush was again selected as the nominee through a series of primary elections and caucuses culminating in the 2004 Republican National Convention held from August 30 to September 2, 2004, in New York City. [34] Third, Keyes's lack of electoral momentum enabled Obama to focus on campaigning in more conservative downstate regions, an unusual move for an Illinois Democrat. Kerry dominated throughout February and his support quickly snowballed as he won caucuses and primaries, taking in wins in Michigan, Washington, Maine, Tennessee; Washington, D.C.; Nevada, Wisconsin, Utah, Hawaii, and Idaho. Hynes and multimillionaire former securities trader Blair Hull each won the endorsements of two of the nine Democratic Illinois members of the US House of Representatives. James Harris replaced Calero on certain other states' ballots. On September 17, 2003, in Little Rock, Arkansas, Clark announced his intention to run in the presidential primary election for the Democratic Party nomination, becoming the tenth and last Democrat to do so (coming many months after the others): "My name is Wes Clark. When Mr Obama left the White House, Republican Donald Trump became the 45th President of the United States in 2016. At the time provisional ballots were reported as numbering 140,000 (and later estimated to be only 135,000). Biden, 77, is a retro politician who ran a retro campaign. [26] On March 29, 2004, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider ruled that several of the Ryans' divorce records should be opened to the public, and ruled that a court-appointed referee would later decide which custody files should remain sealed to protect the interests of Ryan's young child. His campaign focused on themes of leadership and patriotism; early campaign advertisements relied heavily on biography. For the primary elections, turnout was 26.69%, with 1,904,800 votes cast. Republican McCain was a Vietnam War veteran and a six-term US senator. [42], Following the election, Keyes refused to call Obama to congratulate him. His campaign focused on themes of leadership and patriotism; early campaign ads relied heavily on biography. A candidate needs 1,255 delegates to become the nominee. In the days leading up to the Iowa vote, there was much negative campaigning between the Dean and Gephardt candidacies. On October 29, four days before the election, excerpts of a video of Osama bin Laden addressing the American people were broadcast on al Jazeera. John McCain, Senator from Arizona, was the Republican nominee who ran against Obama in 2008. He gave large sums of campaign funds to other candidates and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and sent many of his volunteers to work on other races, including that of eventual three-term Congresswoman Melissa Bean who defeated then-Congressman Phil Crane in that year's election. According to one exit poll, people who voted for Bush cited the issues of terrorism and traditional values as the most important factors in their decision. 30% of all U.S. votes cast in the 2004 election were cast on direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machine, which do not print individual paper records of each vote. This phrase had previously been used by Bush in the summer of 2003, warning insurgents that the United States would not be intimidated to leave Iraq until after the country had been stabilized. incumbent Fitzgerald announced he would not seek a second term in 2004,[12] The move was met with opposition from some Republican lawmakers. (triggering the first application of the Millionaires' Amendment of the 2002 McCain–Feingold Act), in the most expensive Senate primary in U.S. The result of an electoral tie would cause the election to be decided in the House of Representatives with each state casting one vote, regardless of population. Two weeks later, former Vice President and 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore announced on the CBS program 60 Minutes that he would not seek election to the presidency in 2004.