Hoskins – so early an Obama supporter, he rates a post-speech hello

While Mark Hosty is supporting John McCain, his colleague on the village council, Rory Hoskins, is doing all he can to elect Barack Obama president.

Hoskins, who was chosen president of the Proviso Township Democratic Organization in June, is organizing volunteers to travel to the battleground state of Michigan to work for Obama.

“I’d kind of seen Obama around the state since the late ’90s,” says Hoskins, who got to know the then-obscure state senator when Hoskins was in Springfield working for the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs.

Hoskins was an early supporter of Obama’s longshot yet successful bid for the U.S. Senate-the seat that Obama won in 2004.

At the UIC pavilion last year, after Obama made a big speech for a bigger office, Obama stopped by to say hello to Hoskins and his son.

“Barack has always been very warm,” Hoskins says. “It’s kind of neat to know a presidential candidate.”