Harper's has a long article on how Chicago took over D.C. by Ben Austen:
A surprising number of the Chicagoans I met in Washington, on hearing of my interest in their growing ranks within the Obama Administration, delivered the same punch line to a well-worn story about home. Sixty years ago, when a future U.S. congressman and federal judge named Abner Mikva tried to volunteer at his South Side ward office, the boss there asked him, “Who sent you?” After the young Mikva admitted no one had, he was rebuffed: “We don’t want nobody nobody sent.” By reciting this kicker, the Chicagoans were staking their own claim to the city’s pugnacious political history while at the same time implying they had traveled far from that world. It was a way to say they had come out of Chicago with all the valuable lessons and none of the taint. Barack Obama himself sometimes proclaimed on the campaign trail, “Nobody sent me,” announcing both his ties to his adopted city and his arrival as a force for change.
