Jesse Jackson, Jr. is seen as a potential successor to Barack Obama in the Senate. Should Obama's replacement be black?

Although Barack Obama’s historic election will place an African-American in the White House, it will reduce the number of African-Americans in the Senate to zero.

That’s an even lonelier number than one, and it is not a number that this nation should be proud of. So the question is: Does Obama’s replacement in the Senate have to be black?

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Some would argue yes. And Jesse Jackson Jr., a member of the House since 1995, began campaigning for the slot even before Obama won the presidency. Jackson, son of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, was one of Obama’s national co-chairmen and says he would be “honored and humbled” to replace Obama.

So he’s an easy choice, a shoo-in for the job, right? Well, no.

The politics of Illinois is not quite that simple. And the top contenders for the job have a tangled web of relationships with the people who will have a voice in Obama’s replacement, including Obama himself; Dick Durbin, the other Democratic senator from Illinois; Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a Democrat, who officially will make the choice, and Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, now in his sixth term, who has, to put it mildly, a certain amount of influence in the state.

Rep. Jackson does not have a good relationship with Mayor Daley. They disagree on a huge local issue — whether to build a new airport south of Chicago near Jackson’s district or expand O’Hare — and Jackson also toyed with the idea of running against Daley for mayor in 2007. At that time, Jackson brought up the touchy subject of fathers, saying that perhaps Mayor Daley was not proud of everything his father, the late Richard J. Daley, had done.

“His father was responsible for segregated policies of the city,” Rep. Jackson said. “I’m sure the mayor is not excited about the shoot-to-kill order, the protests or how Dr. King was treated. I’m sure he is not proud of that.”

Political attacks are one thing, but attacks on family are another, and in Chicago, neither is forgiven. (Jackson decided not to run against Daley, who was easily reelected.)

Gov. Blagojevich is not a fan of Jackson’s either, and, personalities and feuds aside, the argument used against Jackson is that he would “lack appeal downstate” when he had to run for election to the Senate seat in 2010. Lacking appeal downstate is code for, “White people won’t vote for him.”

A Chicago political insider whom I trust says that Jackson is on a list of possible replacements for Obama but that Jackson has only an outside chance.

One intriguing name on the shortlist is that of Emil Jones, 73, currently president of the Illinois Senate. He was one of Obama’s political patrons, is close to the governor and is an African-American, yet I got snorts of derision when I ran his name past some other Illinois sources of mine. That’s because Jones is from the old school — he started out as a sewer inspector, which is not bad training for a life in politics — and is not a modern, ready-for-TV candidate, possessing an orator’s tongue. He is a Chicago pol — the ring tone on his cell phone is the theme from “The Godfather” — but he would be a “place holder” only and would not run in 2010. He would fill the seat with an African-American and give the other contenders plenty of time to start their campaigns.