Half-sister hits the trail

A lot of people ask Maya Soetoro-Ng if it's unreal to watch her brother run for president. It's not.

"Barack has always been larger than life," Soetoro-Ng, 37, says of her older sibling, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., one of the leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Obama, she says, always had an aura of leadership and of restlessness. He was never satisfied with accomplishments that to others seemed extraordinary. "He had a sense he hadn't quite fulfilled his destiny," she said.

Soetoro-Ng was in Las Vegas on Monday to campaign for Obama, the first time she's traveled from her home in Honolulu to stump for him. After meeting with women supporters Monday morning, college students during the day and campaign volunteers in the evening, she continues today to Iowa, New York and New Hampshire.

She and Obama, nine years her elder, have the same mother, Ann Dunham, a white Kansan whose family moved to Hawaii. But the two have different fathers, both foreign nationals who didn't stay around long. Obama's father was a Kenyan who left when he was two; Soetoro-Ng's father was an Indonesian who moved the family from Hawaii to his native country, but within a few years he too was out of the picture.

Dunham, who died in 1995, was the rock of consistency for both children, and an early role model for Obama, Soetoro-Ng told Monday morning's Women for Obama breakfast at Coco's restaurant on Tropicana Avenue.

"She raised both of us on her own," Soetoro-Ng told the dozen volunteers gathered for the meeting. "The men in her life were decidedly absent, unfortunately, but she viewed them as having given her this wonderful gift -- her children."

Soetoro-Ng portrayed her brother as raised and surrounded by strong women who taught him, she said, to be "a feminist."

Her name was never said, but another tough female was the unseen presence at Monday's event: Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. After Soetoro-Ng read a list of Obama's policy proposals and accomplishments that benefitted women, the Obama supporters expressed frustration that so many women they know are only interested in the female candidate.

One volunteer said she wanted to send her women friends the information Soetoro-Ng had read because a lot of them "only know about that other candidate."

Another urged those present, "When they do argue for the other person, say: 'We know that brand. It didn't work. The American people want something different.'"

According to polls, Clinton, a senator representing New York, enjoys a large advantage among women Democratic primary voters.

Soetoro-Ng said the solution is simply for Obama's women supporters to "just keep talking." In an interview, she said, "He is the best candidate for women, and I believe that so completely. His presence isn't symbolic, it's substantive, in terms of impacting women's lives."

Clinton herself, Soetoro-Ng said, "I think honestly does not believe that she should be judged based exclusively on her gender. I don't think any of us should make the decision to vote symbolically."

The major Democratic candidates' spouses have all been high-profile surrogates for them, but not their siblings. That may be because some candidates' siblings aren't as presentable as Soetoro-Ng, a vivacious teacher and former dancer who greets new acquaintances with a hug and "aloha."

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards has a younger brother who has been in trouble with the law multiple times, and Clinton's two younger brothers have been in the spotlight for shady business deals and involvement in pardons issued by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

An exception is Delaware Sen. Joe Biden's sister Valerie Biden Owens, who has run his political campaigns.

Soetoro-Ng hasn't been a traveling surrogate for the Obama campaign before because she works as a high- school teacher. She's now taking off a quarter of the school year, hoping to do whatever she can to put Obama over the top in the nominating contests that start in less than two months -- to fulfill his destiny, as she sees it.

"While the rest of us are content to make a difference in the world in our own little corners, he always wanted to make a greater impact," she said.

Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@reviewjournal.com or (702) 387-2919.