sentences:  Obama surged into the lead after he finally began television advertising in Chicago in the final three weeks of the campaign, which was expanded to downstate Illinois during the last six days of the campaign.The ads included strong endorsements by the five largest newspapers in Illinois—the "Chicago Tribune", "Chicago Sun-Times", "Daily Herald", "The Rockford Register Star", and "Peoria Journal Star"—and a testimonial by Sheila Simon that Obama was "cut from that same cloth" as her father, the late former U.S.Senator Paul Simon, who had planned to endorse and campaign for Obama before his unexpected death in December 2003.