Joseph "Joe" Manchin III (born August 24, 1947) is the junior United States Senator representing West Virginia. Manchin, a Democrat, was Governor of West Virginia from 2005 to 2010. He won the special election in November 2010 to fill the seat of Robert Byrd, who had died in office; the term ends January 3, 2013.

Manchin was born in Farmington, West Virginia, in 1947, the second of five children of Mary (née Gouzd) and John Manchin. His grandparents were Italian and Czechoslovakian immigrants. His father owned a carpet and furniture store. His grandfather, Joe Manchin I, owned a grocery store. Both his father and his grandfather were elected as Mayor of Farmington, West Virginia. His uncle James Manchin was a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates and was elected statewide as West Virginia Secretary of State and West Virginia State Treasurer. Manchin graduated from Farmington High School in 1965.

Manchin entered West Virginia University on a football scholarship in 1965; however, an injury during practice ended his football career. He graduated in 1970 with a degree in information management and later became involved in several family-owned businesses.

Barack Hussein Obama II (ⁱ/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.