03/28/08

AP Press Release

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama to speak at AP annual luncheon April 14

NEW YORK -- U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, who is locked in a tight duel for the Democratic presidential nomination, is the scheduled speaker for The Associated Press annual meeting luncheon April 14 in Washington, D.C. His remarks to representatives of the not-for-profit news cooperative's membership will be Webcast live from the Washington Convention Center.

The first-term U.S. senator from Illinois, who announced his presidential bid in February 2007, will be speaking at the Monday afternoon portion of AP's annual meeting of newspaper and broadcast members. The 90-minute luncheon, which starts at 1 p.m. EDT and requires purchase of a ticket, will be held in the Ballroom on Level 3.

The morning session will feature an interview by AP political writers Ron Fournier and Liz Sidoti with presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. It will be held in Room 146A, starting at 10:30 a.m. See details at www.ap.org/annual08/ on the AP corporate Internet site. Both McCain and Obama will speak and take questions.

Portions of the annual meeting, which will be hosted by Tom Curley, AP president and CEO, and Dean Singleton, chairman of the AP board of directors, will be Webcast. Singleton and Curley will deliver reports to the AP membership during the morning program. Access details for the Webcast will be posted, when they become available, on AP's corporate Internet site at www.ap.org

Obama was born in Hawaii, where his American mother and Kenyan father met while students at the University of Hawaii. His father returned to Kenya, where he became an official in the economics ministry, when Obama was 2. He graduated from Columbia University and received his law degree from Harvard Law School, where he became the first black president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review. Obama worked as a community organizer in Chicago and led a voter registration drive to help Bill Clinton. He was elected in 1996 to the Illinois Senate, where he represented a South Side district of Chicago. After a failed bid for Congress in 2000, Obama was elected in 2004 to the U.S. Senate where he serves on the Foreign Relations Committee, the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee and the Homeland Security and Government Affairs and the Veterans' Affairs committees.

Before the primary and caucus season began, Obama said in an AP interview in December 2007, he thought that presidential rivals who resort to negative criticism based on personal claims rather than issues will turn off voters. "If people are arguing about policy, that's part of politics and that's fair," he said.

Read more about Sen. Obama on his presidential campaign Web site at http://www.barackobama.com/learn/meet_barack.php

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