As Quickly as Overnight, a New Democratic Star Is Born
By MONICA DAVEY

CHICAGO, March 17 — In his quest for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate, Barack Obama was, by many measures, supposed to lose. One opponent was a multimillionaire pouring his own cash into the race. Another was a loyal statewide official who was expected to bring the party's ward troops out in force on election day.

But Mr. Obama, a state senator from Chicago, awoke Wednesday to a deluge of national attention, a result of his overwhelming victory the night before by margins unforeseen by any polls or guesses. John Kerry called. So did Senator Tom Daschle and Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic national chairman. And the phone kept ringing.

Overnight, Mr. Obama, a former civil rights lawyer, has become a treasured commodity in the Democratic Party nationally, in part because Democrats see the Illinois seat as one they may easily snatch back from Republicans in November, and in part because Mr. Obama would be the only black member of the Senate.

"I think it's fair to say that the conventional wisdom was we could not win," Mr. Obama told a ballroom packed with his supporters late Tuesday night. "We didn't have enough money. We didn't have enough organization. There was no way that a skinny guy from the South Side with a funny name like Barack Obama could ever win a statewide race.

"Sixteen months later we are here, and Democrats from all across Illinois — suburbs, city, downstate, upstate, black, white, Hispanic, Asian — have declared: Yes, we can! Yes, we can! Yes, we can!"