Obama Resigns Senate, Thanks Constituents

President-elect Barack Obama has resigned his Senate seat, and thanked his Illinois constituents in a letter published in a Chicago newspaper Sunday.

“After serving the people of Illinois in the United States Senate,” Obama wrote, “I am stepping down as senator to prepare for the responsibilities I will assume as our nation’s next president.”

Recalling his work as a community organizer in Chicago, as well as his time as a state Senator in the state, Obama acclaimed the lessons he said he had learned in those experiences.

Referencing the Civil War President Abraham Lincoln–another Illinois member of Congress who left his office for the White House–Obama said that, like Lincoln, he asked for Illinois’s support and prayers.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) will now have to appoint a successor to fill Obama’s seat. Several lawmakers have begun to jockey for the position.

–Michael O’Brien