SPRINGFIELD - The president of the Illinois Senate is sitting in his huge office, talking in gravelly tones about strategies and counterstrategies in state politics. Out of nowhere, the theme from "The Godfather" begins playing.

It turns out to be the ringtone on his phone - an appropriate song for the man who amounts to Barack Obama's political godfather.

Emil Jones Jr. helped Obama learn the ways of the state Legislature. He assigned the legislation that Obama now boasts about in his presidential campaign.

And when Obama wanted a promotion to the U.S. Senate, his first move was to line up Jones' support. It gave the little-known legislator legitimacy in the Senate race, keeping Obama's campaign from being instantly trampled by the front-runners.

"He's been indispensable to Barack's career. He wants to see a black president before he gets called home," said fellow state Sen. Rickey Hendon, D-Chicago.

While Obama got vital help from Jones, he didn't get his political style and message of reform there.

Jones, a former sewer inspector for the city of Chicago, is an unabashedly old-fashioned politician. He has relatives on the state payroll, steers state grants to favorite organizations and uses his clout to punish enemies and bury inconvenient legislation.

Obama supporters see the alliance as an example of his ability to get things done by working with all kinds of people. Critics see it as hypocrisy - Obama refusing to speak out against the kinds of abuse he claims to oppose.

The two first met in the mid-1980s, when Jones was already in the state Senate and Obama was a young community organizer on Chicago's South Side.

Obama apparently didn't think much of Jones. In his memoir "Dreams from My Father," Obama dismisses the character based on Jones as "an old ward heeler" who had little clout left after backing the wrong candidate.

But Jones says he was impressed by Obama. When he saw Obama's small group holding an outdoor meeting, Jones says, he invited them into his office and listened to Obama's ideas for reducing dropout rates at local schools.

Obama's Developing Communities Project worked with Jones on some issues in the following months, until Obama left for Harvard Law School. Afterward, the two men had little contact until 1997, when Obama was elected to the state Senate, where Jones was now the minority leader.

"When he first came, we sat down and he said to me, 'You know I like to work hard. Feel free to hand me any tough assignments on legislation,"' Jones recalls. "That was unusual, for a person to say 'I like to work."'

Jones gave him a chance, assigning Obama to a bipartisan task force in charge of drafting ethics legislation.

It was not a glamor job. Obama would be asking legislators to accept new restrictions and asking good-government groups to compromise, leaving no one entirely happy. But legislators ended up passing the state's first major ethics overhaul in years, including limits on the size of gifts to officials and new reporting requirements.

Jones also let Obama work on establishing a state version of the federal Earned Income Tax Credit and lobby Republicans to soften their legislation adding work requirements to the state welfare system - an effort that ended with GOP senators praising Obama.

Several senators said Jones and Obama weren't particularly close. They didn't socialize much, and the legislative opportunities he gave to Obama were similar to those available to other promising senators.

But their relationship changed in 2002.

It was clear that Democrats were going to win a majority in the state Senate that fall, making Jones the Senate president. And then the campaign machinery would start cranking again, with a long line of people looking at a run for the U.S. Senate in 2004.

Obama approached Jones with an unexpected proposal: Use your new clout to back me for U.S. Senate.

"It clicked and made sense," Jones said. "I had known him for so many years. Very smart, but a very genuine person. I knew he had all the potential, so why not get behind him and support him?"