Marilyn Werber Serafini, National Journal
- Idris Ogunjobi had never really thought about American politics before. Born in Nigeria and holding out the possibility of returning to his homeland someday, he wasn’t even planning on becoming a U.S. citizen.
All that changed, however, the day that Ogunjobi heard Barack Obama talking on CNN, long before the Democrat declared his intention to seek the White House. “I was moved,” said Ogunjobi, 24, who was in the U.S. Army at the time. (He served in Iraq in 2005 and ’06.) “I told my fellow soldiers about him … and when I heard he was running [for president], it was a no-brainer. I became a citizen so I could vote.”
But Ogunjobi didn’t stop there. He began volunteering for Obama and the Alaska Democratic Party, urging people by phone to support Obama, and he launched a successful campaign to become a rare African-American delegate from Alaska.
