ASHTON-IN-MAKERFIELD, England (AP) — Labour’s Andy Burnham, the popular mayor of Greater Manchester, won a special election for a seat in Parliament and signaled Friday that he will use it to challenge embattled Prime Minister Keir Starmer for leadership of the country.
Starmer said he planned to fight for his job, but a growing number of colleagues urged him to make a dignified exit.
“There is this sense of collective movement,” former Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman told the “Electoral Dysfunction” podcast. “Andy Burnham is going to become prime minister. Keir Starmer is going to be leaving office.”
Burnham decisively won the seat of Makerfield in northwestern England over Rob Kenyon of the anti-immigration party Reform UK. The result cements the status of Burnham, a 56-year-old politician nicknamed the King of the North, as the top contender to replace Starmer as leader of the Labour Party and the country. Burnham won almost 55% of the 45,510 votes cast for a field of more than a dozen candidates, over 9,000 more than runner-up Kenyon.
Burnham’s acceptance speech left no doubt that he wants to lead the country, and not just be one of the more than 400 Labour lawmakers in the 650-seat House of Commons.
“Everyone knows that politics isn’t working,” he said. “Everyone can feel that the country isn’t where it should be. Tonight could, just could, be the turning point.”
Starmer congratulated Burnham, writing on X that voters “chose Labour’s campaign of hope and optimism over division and hate.”
But the prime minister insisted he would fight any attempt to oust him.
“I will run, I will stand,” if there is a Labour leadership contest, Starmer said. “I’ve said repeatedly I’m not going to walk away from that.”
Burnham says he’s the candidate of change
Burnham has led Manchester since 2017, overseeing rapid regeneration for the city where the Industrial Revolution was forged. He is pledging to repeat his signature brand of “Manchesterism” on a national scale.
Burnham said he would work to ensure that “the name Makerfield is forever synonymous with bringing about the change this country needs.”
He told supporters and campaign workers on Friday that “we are going to lay out a new path for Britain.”
“We need an economy that works for everybody, not a few in far-off places from here,” he said. “We have an opportunity to turn the tide, to make the country feel like it’s working again, to make people see that politics can make a positive difference, to make people feel hope again.”
Earlier, in his victory speech, he said Labour had “a final chance to change” and win back voters’ trust.
“But it is a chance now, from this result tonight, to build a new politics based on unity and hope, turning away from the path that takes us to a divided, dark politics of the kind we see in the United States,” he said.
Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said defeating Reform UK strengthens Burnham’s claim to be Labour’s biggest asset.
“The narrative he can bring is, ‘No one else could have won that seat. I won that. I bring something unique. I bring an ability to renew our appeal,’” Ford said.
Voters in Makerfield, who have been the focus of international media attention during the five-week campaign, were aware their votes carried unusual weight.
“I voted Andy Burnham because I don’t believe Keir Starmer has done a good job,” said Ernest Sherman, 70. “So I voted tactically knowing that Andy Burnham has a chance to replace Starmer. So it will still be Labour, but he will have different views.”
Labour is in power but unpopular
Starmer’s popularity has cratered since he led the center-left Labour Party to a landslide election victory in July 2024.
He has struggled to deliver promised economic growth, repair tattered public services and ease the cost of living, and been hamstrung by repeated missteps, including his decision to appoint Peter Mandelson, a scandal-tarnished friend of Jeffrey Epstein, as the U.K. ambassador to the United States.
Labour is losing liberal voters to the growing Green Party, and facing a rising Reform UK, which consistently leads in nationwide opinion polls. The Nigel Farage -led party has rapidly gained ground in post-industrial northern England areas like Makerfield, some 200 miles (320 kilometers) northwest of London.
Burnham’s resounding victory gives Labour new hope of stopping the Reform tide. Farage acknowledged he was “disappointed, no question about it,” with the result.
Labour’s dismal performance in May’s local elections spurred scores of lawmakers to demand Starmer’s resignation. Wes Streeting resigned as health secretary in May, saying that “where we need vision, we have a vacuum.” Streeting has said he will run in a leadership contest if there is one.
Then Josh Simons, the Labour lawmaker for Makerfield, stepped down to trigger a special election and give Burnham the chance to return to Parliament.
Britain’s parliamentary system allows governing parties to change leaders midterm, with the winner becoming prime minister without the need for a national election. Under Labour rules, a lawmaker can challenge the leader if they have backing from a fifth of the party’s House of Commons lawmakers — a number that stands at 81.
Burnham’s victory piles pressure on Starmer to quit
Burnham will head to London to be sworn in as a lawmaker as soon as Monday. He’s likely to seek a meeting with Starmer to argue that the prime minister should exit gracefully and set a timetable for his departure.
Burnham’s supporters wasted no time in urging Starmer to go. Labour lawmaker Louise Haigh, a Burnham ally, said Starmer should “consider an orderly and managed transition.”
“Andy won’t be doing anything rash or hasty,” she told Sky News. “I’m really hopeful the prime minister and Andy can come to an agreement.”
Starmer insisted on Friday that he was elected on a “mandate for change” and would carry on with it. Earlier this week he suggested that he could offer Burnham a Cabinet post, an idea rebuffed by Burnham’s allies.
Despite his stubborn determination, Starmer could be forced out if several members of the Cabinet tell him the game is up and quit, or threaten to quit, in protest. Tthere could then be a leadership contest, or a coronation, depending on whether other potential candidates think Burnham has an unassailable lead.
“When things begin to slide away from a prime minister, they begin to slide away very, very quickly,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.
“Over the weekend there will be all sorts of talks behind closed doors, mainly I suspect people trying to persuade Keir Starmer … that the game is up.”
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Lawless reported from London. Associated Press writer Danica Kirka contributed to this story.

Andy Burnham has officially won his special election and regained a seat in Parliament, setting him up to challenge the deeply unpopular Keir Starmer as the leader of the Labour party and as prime minister.
Burnham, currently the mayor of Greater Manchester in northwest England, won a seat in Makerfield and came away with 55% of the vote in a field of more than a dozen candidates, according to The Associated Press. The runner-up was Rob Kenyon of Reform UK, a right-wing populist party, who received more than 9,000 fewer votes than Burnham.
Burnham last served as a member of Parliament in 2017 but strongly implied in his victory speech that he is returning with the intention to lead the United Kingdom.
“Everyone knows that politics isn’t working. Everyone can feel that the country isn’t where it should be. Tonight could, just could, be the turning point,” he said, according to the AP. “This result will bring about a country that works fairly for everywhere and for everybody.”
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This special election, called by-elections in Britain, was unusually significant because the area’s Labour MP, Josh Simons, intentionally resigned to allow Burnham to win the seat and pursue leadership.
The potentially outsized impact of this election was juxtaposed with the strange scene that unfolded when all the candidates gathered on Friday morning to hear the results. Burnham stood in between an independent candidate dressed in a fox costume and another candidate known as “Count Binface”.
As his name suggests, “Count Binface,” whose real name is Jonathan David Harvey, was wearing a trash can on his head and regularly runs in U.K. elections to advocate for increased voter turnout.
Starmer congratulated Burnham in a social media post on X, saying voters “chose Labour’s campaign of hope and optimism over division and hate.”
When asked about Burnham’s intentions to oust him as leader, Starmer said he will fight to remain prime minister, a position he has held for nearly two years.
“I’ve said repeatedly I’m not going to walk away from that,” Starmer told reporters.
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Starmer led the Labour party to a landslide victory in July 2024 and ever since, his popularity has been eroding thanks to a persistently high cost of living, an anemic economy and a scandal over his willingness to accept gifts from wealthy donors.
Last September, Starmer was slammed for appointing Peter Mandelson as the British ambassador to the United States, when it was known as early as 2019 that Mandelson had a friendship with convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Following an enormous public backlash, Mandelson was quickly dismissed from his post.
With Starmer as leader, Labour is increasingly losing liberal-minded voters to the Green Party, while also facing stronger challenges by Reform UK, a Nigel Farage-led party that advocates against mass migration and in favor of tighter border controls. Farage, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, said he was disappointed by Burnham’s victory.
Burnham is expected to head to London to be sworn in as soon as Monday. Under the British parliamentary system, the governing party can hold leadership elections in the middle of the term. The winner of such a contest can become prime minister without there having to be a national election.
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Under Labour rules, a lawmaker can challenge the leader if they win the backing of a fifth of their party’s members in the House of Commons. Burnham has enough lawmakers on board to trigger a leadership contest, according to a report from The New Statesman.
According to the AP, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy said Burnham and Starmer will “have a conversation about what comes next” in the next few days.

LONDON (AP) — Andy Burnham is a political insider turned outsider who aims to be Britain’s next prime minister.
The 56-year-old politician presents himself as an amiable northern everyman who prefers T-shirts to a suit and tie and spends spare time playing soccer or spinning 1990s tunes during DJ battles.
He’s also an experienced politician whose career has taken him from high-level government jobs to the mayoralty of Greater Manchester, and now to the cusp of the prime minister’s office.
Burnham is expected to challenge Prime Minister Keir Starmer after winning a seat in Parliament in a special election he hailed as a “turning point” for U.K. politics.
His nickname is inspired by ‘Game of Thrones’
Burnham was born and raised in a pocket of northwest England between Liverpool and Manchester, the son of a British Telecom engineer and a receptionist. He joined the Labour Party as a teenager, attended Cambridge University and was first elected to Parliament in 2001.
He was a lawmaker for a decade and a half, rising through the ranks under Prime Minister Tony Blair and serving in Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Cabinet between 2007 and 2010.
He ran twice for the leadership of the Labour Party, in 2010 and 2015, and lost badly each time, before quitting Westminster to run for Manchester mayor.
His tenure has seen him nicknamed the King of the North, a “Game of Thrones”-inspired nod both to his championing of his home region and his barely disguised political ambition.
He gained the moniker during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he harangued Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson over what he called a “London-centric” approach to the crisis.
Burnham has led the Greater Manchester region since 2017, overseeing rapid regeneration for the city where the Industrial Revolution was forged. The city center has boomed, with skyscrapers blooming on vacant post-industrial sites. Many residents praise him for championing the city. He took a piecemeal public transport system under public control, branded it the Bee Network and improved its services.
He has also won praise for supporting the campaign for justice for victims of the Hillsborough disaster, when 97 Liverpool soccer fans were killed in a crush at a game in Sheffield in 1989. Years of advocacy led by victims’ families exposed mistakes and wrongdoing by police – who initially spread a false narrative blaming drunken fans – and extracted an apology from the government.
He pledges to end trickle-down economics
Burnham is perceived to be to the political left of Starmer – an asset with Labour members – and is acknowledged as one of the party’s best communicators. The rather stiff public speaker of his earlier leadership bids has been replaced by a relaxed figure in jeans and open-necked shirts.
His three mayoral election victories and decisive win in Thursday’s election in Makerfield, where he trounced the candidate of the anti-immigration party Reform UK, have cemented his status as a winner. Many in the party hope he can reverse Labour’s precipitous decline in popularity since Starmer won an election landslide two years ago.
Makerfield voter Ellen Picton, 66, said she was “absolutely thrilled” by Burnham’s victory.
“I believe that he’s a man for the common people,” she said. “Andy is like one of us, and he understands what we are going through.”
Burnham is pledging to repeat on a national scale his signature brand of “Manchesterism” – a politics that, he likes to say, puts people and place before party and centers on regions ignored by governments in London.
“What we’ve built in Greater Manchester needs to go national,” Burnham said during the campaign. “I know what it is to turn places around.”
But it remains to be seen whether he can have national appeal, said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.
“Calling him King of the North in some ways, I think, raises the question of whether he can also be King of the South, King of the East and King of the West,″ Bale said. “However, he does seem to have the kind of X factor that encourages people to think of him as not an ordinary politician, somebody who can communicate with normal people, someone who can speak human.”
In a postelection speech to supporters, Burnham sketched out his priorities: better vocational education and jobs for young people, lower energy bills and rail fares and “an end to trickle down economics, which didn’t trickle down very much at all to places like this.”
Critics say Burnham’s politics are vague and fail to grapple with tough issues, such as where the money will come from to pay for his pledges. And they note that running a country of 70 million is a lot different from overseeing a city region of 3 million.
Nonetheless Burnham now has momentum that could propel him into 10 Downing Street.
“Andy Burnham is probably one of the most popular politicians in the country,” Bale said. “Although, to be honest, that is not saying much.”
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Kwiyeon Ha in Ashton-in-Makerfield, England contributed to this story.

EXCLUSIVE: As Democrats across the country criticize education programs in red states, Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is touting a major achievement in her state she hopes will serve as an education blueprint for all states, regardless of politics, nationwide.
“The thing we’re most excited about is the fact that so many Arkansas students are doing better now than they would have been doing pre-LEARNS legislation,” Sanders told Fox News Digital on the day her office announced a “major breakthrough” in education following implementation of a 2023 Republican-backed statewide education overhaul, known as the LEARNS Act.
The law also raised the minimum teacher salary from $36,000 to $50,000, created performance-based teacher bonuses, boosted literacy support, funded school safety initiatives and banned critical race theory and classroom teachings related to critical race theory, gender identity, sexual orientation and sexually explicit materials.
Arkansas public school students are seeing sharp gains on a new statewide exam, with proficiency rates rising more than 7% across all grades and subjects in just three years under the state’s conservative education reforms. Since 2024, student proficiency has increased by more than 7% and by more than 5% since 2025, according to the governor’s office.
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“We want our kids to do well,” Sanders said. “We love the fact that kids in Arkansas are learning, that they’re moving up. The growth and achievement that we’re seeing from our kids is exactly what we want to happen.”
In 2026, 42.2% of students met proficiency standards, up from 36.9% in 2025. Mathematics proficiency increased from 36.4% in 2024 to 44.2% in 2026, science proficiency rose from 35.6% to 44.0%, and English language arts proficiency climbed from 33.8% to 39.5%.
Students performing at the lowest levels also fell across all subjects, dropping from an average of 27.3% in 2025 to 23.1% in 2026. Reading performance among third-graders improved as well, with proficiency rising from 36% in 2024 to 43% in 2026.
Students in kindergarten through second grade, the first to learn under the state’s education reforms, exceeded 50% proficiency in nearly every subject and grade level, while maintaining upward momentum.
Sanders said transformational reform is driven by better teaching and a unified focus on student needs, saying “a comprehensive, aligned approach” makes a difference.
“Not any one thing, but it’s the collective process of really transforming the way that we approach education,” Sanders said. “Realizing that every single kid can learn when given the right environment, when given the right tools, and letting failure not be an option.”
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Democrats in recent years, including former Vice President Kamala Harris and prominent teachers’ union officials, have targeted red-state education policies, but Sanders told Fox News Digital she hopes the education program sends a message across the country.
“I’m hopeful absolutely that red states will use what we’re doing here as a blueprint, but I also hope that blue states will look at the success that you’re seeing in places like Arkansas, Mississippi and others and try to follow suit because we want all kids to do well,” Sanders said.
“Seeing kids achieve and do better and be successful, that’s not a red state or blue state issue. That’s something everybody should care about.”
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Sanders said the results are “showing what works,” adding there is no need to “reinvent the wheel.”
“We know that raising the bar, providing those resources and support for our students, for our teachers, for our superintendents makes a difference,” Sanders said. “We’ve got a recipe here that’s working and absolutely hope it not only changes the conversation but frankly changes the system, changes the culture and education.”
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“The LEARNS Act was a bold, innovative, and comprehensive approach to improve education,” Jacob Oliva, secretary of the Arkansas Department of Education, said in a press release. “It was built on research, urgency, and the desperate need for change. These scores prove that listening to teachers, administrators, and parents wasn’t just valuable but also essential. The plan is working. Arkansas students are reading, learning, and benefitting.”

The Obama Presidential Center was dedicated Thursday in Jackson Park to the sounds of celebration and aspiration, music and motivation to amplify Barack and Michelle Obama’s message that it serve as a “beacon of hope” for democracy and help pave the way for a new generation of political leadership.
Surrounded by former Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Bill Clinton and Republican ex-President George W. Bush, their spouses, former foreign leaders, federal, state and local politicians and a bevy of celebrities, former President Barack Obama urged Americans to look past the political turbulence and controversies of the Trump era that have fostered cynicism and to recapture the message of hope and change that catapulted him to the White House in 2008.
President Donald Trump was pointedly not invited to the dedication. His name went unspoken by Barack and Michelle Obama, or any other speaker during the three-hour ceremony — a notable silence given that the current president has long mocked the Obama years and, earlier this week, shared an AI-generated image of the center’s tower as a trash can.
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But in a clear reference to Trump, Barack Obama said the center celebrates “American values we can all share,” including beliefs that the military and law enforcement do not owe their allegiance to a president, that there should be a peaceful transfer of power after an election and that “qualities of character, honesty, integrity, kindness, compassion, a sense of duty and honor” still matter.
“When we lose faith in each other, when we stop believing that voting matters, that citizenship matters, that our collective voices matter, that how we treat each other no longer matters, and we give away our power to decide our own futures, we open the door to the most ruthless or the most careless or the most fearful among us who see some groups and some people as more equal than others and see government as nothing more than a way to divvy up the spoils and punish enemies and keep those who are different in their place,” Obama said during a 34-minute address.
“I do not believe that is the story of America that prevails in the end,” he said. “After all this country has been through, (to give in) to cynicism and division would be a betrayal of our founding ideals, a betrayal of our faith, and I remain convinced that the overwhelming majority of Americans feel the same way — that as unsettled as we are, people aren’t looking for perpetual anger and division. They are looking for fairness and common sense and mutual respect, that deep in our gut we want to find a way to turn towards each other again, not further away.”
Obama said the exhibits inside the $835 million center “are not meant to evoke nostalgia for some gauzy bygone era, some unattainable past that we can dream about and say, ‘Oh, we miss you, Barack.’
“They’re meant to remind us of who we can be, to remind us of what’s possible, so we can forge ahead, clear-eyed and confident and do the work that still needs to be done,” he said. “There is a new generation out there ready to write the next chapter of our story. We intend to help them do it and we ask that you join us.”
During her speech, Michelle Obama paid tribute to her husband as “unflappable at every turn, always focused, always calm, always looking at the long view,” as she called the center ”a beacon of hope, a monument to our unshakable values, the ones my husband has exemplified his entire life — equality, empathy, honesty, inclusion, fairness.”
“Especially during these anxious and divisive times, it is so important that we remember that those values are not unique to my husband. They are the same ones that your husbands and wives, your parents and children, your friends and neighbors exhibit and pass on every single day,” she said.
She also took an oblique dig at Trump by noting that her husband was actually awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor the current president has openly yearned for but not received. The comment sparked an audible guffaw from Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
Music has been a tradition for the Obamas, and the event was punctuated with several high-mark musical performances. Chicagoan Jennifer Hudson opened the event by singing the national anthem as well as “The Impossible Dream,” followed by Christina Aguilera singing “What a Wonderful World.” Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder sang an original song he said was titled “Better Believe” with younger local singers.
Entertainer John Legend sang a cover of Chicagoan Donny Hathaway’s 1973 song “Someday We’ll All Be Free,” later welcoming the choir Uniting Voices Chicago and rapper Common to sing “Glory” from the film “Selma.” The museum is wrapped in text from Obama’s speech at the 50th anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery marches.
Other performers included The Roots, Bruce Springsteen, Bono and The Edge from U2, with the event culminating in a performance of “Higher Ground” led by Stevie Wonder, joined by Hudson, Legend, Common, Springsteen and Vedder.
Celebrities from the political world also filled the center’s outdoor main plaza, named after the late civil rights icon U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia.
About half an hour before the event began, political leaders milled about, speaking to and greeting each other, including U.S. Rep. and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Obama chief of staff and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and Arne Duncan, who was education secretary under Obama. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who is retiring at the end of his term early next year, and Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who is the Democratic nominee seeking to succeed Durbin, were also in attendance, as were former Mayor Lori Lightfoot and current Mayor Brandon Johnson.
Hollywood directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas were present, as were Oprah Winfrey, David Letterman, Stephen Colbert and Conan O’Brien, while Gov. JB Pritzker was seen chatting with actor Tom Hanks.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel were there as well.
But it was Barack and Michelle Obama who were the main attraction for the hundreds of invitees at the center’s plaza and the thousands attending a ticketed watch party at the nearby Midway Plaisance.
The former president, who moved to Chicago to work as a community organizer, said the center had to be located on the city’s South Side.
“I found my purpose here, and I fortified my faith here. And I found my community here, friendships that would last a lifetime. I found a girl from the South Side who has been my greatest blessing,” he said, referring to his wife. “For me, this center could not be any other place. It is an expression of thanks, an acknowledgment that so much of what I hold most dear I owe to the people of this city and the people of these surrounding neighborhoods.”
Obama also said that he, his wife and others involved in erecting the center in Jackson Park “wanted (the center) to be a vibrant living celebration of community, where we can learn together and share the joys of art and music and sport and play because it’s in those moments that we’re reminded of our common humanity and strengthen the bonds of trust that not only make our lives richer, but make our democracy stronger.”
Discussing his career, Obama said he learned to listen and connect with people while working in Chicago as an organizer in the neighborhoods and that those lessons steered him to his life in politics and eventually the presidency.
“I was possessed with this abiding faith that if we could give people more of a say in the forces that govern their lives, if we could bridge some of the differences that drove us apart, then we could build an America where everyone counts and everyone has a fair shot and everyone belongs,” he said. “I learned that leadership has less to do with titles or rank or chasing attention than with helping others find their voice, reaching their potential.”
Now that the center is built, he said, he hopes it stands as a symbol of what makes the United States great.
“Democracy can be frustrating. It can be slow. It can be inefficient. And yet, more than anything, I hope this center will serve as an affirmation of just how special, how precious our democracy truly is and remind us of what we can achieve when we embrace our shared responsibilities as citizens,” he said.
During her speech, Michelle Obama alluded to the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to enforce immigration policy, saying, “To ignore the simple truth, to refuse to respect the contributions and experiences of people who aren’t exactly like us, puts us all at risk.”
“No one, and I mean no one, has the right to sit in judgment of who’s American enough,” she said. She also contrasted her husband’s presidency with the current one, saying Barack Obama didn’t grab “as much as we can get for ourselves or (knock) folks down to prop ourselves up.” Instead, she said, her husband showed his “overwhelming goodness, the relentless striving, the quiet dignity that is inside all of us. Our greatest hope is that this center can reflect back just a fraction of that light.”
“You simply don’t have the luxury or time to be cynical or complacent, to wring our hands in despair, to wait for someone else to fix the problem. Y’all, hope is all we have, because hope is the essential spark that lights the fire of change, but hope is a choice.”
Before the Obamas spoke, they were preceded by business owner Marty Nesbitt, who chairs the Obama Foundation, and the foundation’s CEO, Valerie Jarrett.
“This center may be named for the Obamas, but it is built for you,” Jarrett told the crowd.
Nesbitt made a reference to the tan suit he was wearing, a nod to the light-colored suit Obama wore as president, which became oddly controversial among pundits in right-wing media.
“How do y’all like my tan suit?” Nesbitt asked the crowd as Obama laughed. Colbert and Letterman, both former hosts of “The Late Show” on CBS who sat near each other, also donned tan. Colbert wore a full tan suit, while Letterman went with a tan blazer. Obama Foundation officials said the former president got rid of his tan suit while cleaning out old items.
The celebratory nature of the event stood in sharp contrast to a nation that is currently sharply divided along political lines. The Obama center’s ceremonial retrospective of the history-making election of the country’s first Black president came at a time when the nation is preparing to honor its 250th birthday and is clouded by Trump’s controversial presidency.
Despite having left office in 2017, Obama remains a deeply popular former president, resulting in the 64-year-old serving as an elder statesman for a Democratic Party struggling to find its way after Trump’s 2024 election and facing internal disputes between progressives and moderates.
A new CNN poll conducted by the research firm SSRS found that Obama is viewed positively by 57% of the American public, far ahead of his predecessors and successors.
Trump is viewed favorably by 34% and unfavorably by 55%; Biden stands at 30% favorable and 54% unfavorable. George W. Bush is viewed favorably by 42% and unfavorably by 33%, and Clinton has a 38% to 39% favorable-to-unfavorable rating.
Obama is viewed unfavorably by 32% of the public, according to the poll results of 2,480 adults aged 18 and over who were surveyed May 7-31. The survey has an error margin of 2.7%.
Before the ceremony began, U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood, a Naperville Democrat, said she cried when, in May, she saw the center’s exhibit about the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Underwood was elected to Congress in 2018 after serving in the Obama administration as a senior adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services, assisting with the act’s implementation.
“I was like, we did that! And now we’re fighting the same fight again. But the American people understand that they’ve lost, and they’re angry about it. And I think that’s what this election will be about,” she said, referring to the upcoming midterms in November. “It’s a healthcare election. It’s a cost election.”
“First of all, America is bigger than Donald Trump,” Underwood continued. “And he doesn’t get to define the legacy of the 250 years of this country. This is our country. And I think what’s so extraordinary about president and Mrs. Obama choosing to do this in the shadows of Juneteenth, meaning Freedom Day, is, I think of Juneteenth as less of a celebration and more of a call to action. And I think that we have to be reminded of what we’ve done before, the battles we’ve won, the change we have brought forth, and recommit ourselves to taking action as we’re moving forward. And I think that you know, the president is going to speak to some of that today.”
Stratton called the event “a celebration, and you can feel the energy, and this is not something that is focused on dividing and how to put other people down. This is all about how we’ve built each other up, and it’s just really exciting to see the real contrast, to me, about what is happening here today.”
Emanuel said when he toured the Obama center three months ago, he called Obama and told him, “It fulfills all of your dreams of making it not a presidential library, but a campus that inspires people to future work.”
Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias, a frequent basketball partner of Obama’s, said, “The national mood is full of anger and vitriol and division, and I think this represents the exact opposite of all of that. I would say, hopefully, it’s a reminder of the good ol’ days when people got along and when there were substantive conversations and debates. Wasn’t all about ego and destruction and destroying the world order.”