May 14, 2008, 6:20 pm Edwards Endorses Obama
By
Jim Rutenberg and Julie Bosman
John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama at a rally in Grand Rapids, Mich. (Photo: Jae C. Hong/Associated Press)
Update | 6:37 p.m. GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina who bowed out of the presidential race in January,
endorsed Senator Barack Obama at a rally here tonight.
“The reason I am here tonight is because the Democratic voters in America have made their choice, and so have I,”
Mr. Edwards said.
Mr. Edwards then went on to say, “There is one man who knows in his heart that it is time to tear down that wall and make one America, Barack Obama.”
Officials announced the news of Mr. Edwards’s endorsement shortly after Mr. Obama landed here late this afternoon. The campaign timed it to coincide with the start of the major evening newscasts, which would have otherwise focused on Senator Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory in West Virginia, which raised new questions about Mr. Obama’s strength with white working class voters.
Mr. Obama’s campaign is hoping the endorsement will be a big step toward the party’s coalescing around Mr. Obama as the Democratic nominee.
Mr. Edwards began by paying tribute to Mrs. Clinton. “It is very, very hard to get up every day and do what she’s done,” Mr. Edwards Mrs. Clinton. “It is hard to go out there and fight and speak up when the odds turn against you. What she has shown is strength and character.”
He said Mrs. Clinton is a “woman who is made of steel. She is a leader in this country not because of her husband but because of what she has done.”
The endorsement ended months of speculation over Mr. Edwards’s preference in the Democratic nominating contest, during which he mostly stayed silent and close to home in Chapel Hill with his wife, Elizabeth.
The Edwards endorsement, though, is singular. Elizabeth Edwards is not scheduled to add her voice to the growing Democratic chorus rallying behind Mr. Obama’s campaign.
Publicly, Mrs. Edwards has said that she favors Mrs. Clinton’s health care plan. Privately, she has told several associates she is unsure if Mr. Obama is the party’s best candidate.
In recent days, Mr. Edwards had made his choice all but obvious, giving a series of
television interviews hinting that he was close to endorsing Mr. Obama, who last week
he called “clearly the nominee at this point.”
On the campaign trail in the past year, Mr. Edwards regularly attacked so-called establishment politicians like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and teamed with Mr. Obama against her in debates.
His campaign sounded similar themes to Mr. Obama’s – both candidates positioned themselves as change agents who would clean house in Washington.
Throughout his second bid for the Democratic nomination, Mr. Edwards clashed repeatedly with Mrs. Clinton, criticizing her for accepting campaign contributions from lobbyists, a practice that he fiercely opposed.
And much of his campaign pitch centered on the notion that Washington politicians have become corrupted by the influence of lobbyists for drug companies, oil companies and other corporate interests.
“You can’t just trade corporate Republicans for corporate Democrats,” he told audiences frequently, an attack aimed at Mrs. Clinton.
But aides to Mr. Edwards said despite his personal admiration and respect for Mr. Obama, he was concerned about Mr. Obama’s experience and readiness for the job.
And he had another consideration: how to position himself for a job in the next president’s administration. As Mr. Edwards saw it, aides said, Mrs. Clinton seemed to be more likely than Mr. Obama to win the nomination.
That was before the nominating contests on February 5, however, when Mr. Obama came out virtually tied with Mrs. Clinton; and the subsequent primaries and caucuses that Mr. Obama won decisively, giving him a significant advantage over Mrs. Clinton in the delegate count.
Mr. Edwards has carefully played down his aspirations for an administration role. In an interview in January, he said he would not accept a vice-presidential spot or Cabinet position. “No, absolutely not,” he said, shaking his head emphatically when asked.
But privately, he told aides that he would consider the role of vice president, and favored the position of attorney general, which would appeal to his experience of decades spent in courtrooms as a trial lawyer in North Carolina; and his desire to follow in the footsteps of Robert F. Kennedy, one of his heroes.
Not long after Mr. Edwards dropped out of the race, John C. Moylan, a close friend and adviser who ran his South Carolina campaign, said Mr. Edwards he would consider a Cabinet spot. “You don’t run for president unless you want to work in the administration,” Mr. Moylan said.
Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton have both heavily courted Mr. Edwards’s endorsement, calling him frequently and sending messages through surrogates. Mr. Edwards and Mrs. Clinton secretly met at his home in Chapel Hill in March; a meeting with Mr. Obama, scheduled several days later, was rescheduled because of intense media attention once news of the two meetings was leaked.
Since dropping out of the race, he has stressed his devotion to the issue of poverty, and promoted his new antipoverty initiative, Half in Ten. He extracted promises from both candidates to focus on poverty as president, and Mrs. Clinton, in a clear gesture to Mr. Edwards, said she would create a Cabinet-level “poverty czar” if she is elected president.
Even before Mr. Edwards withdrew from the presidential race, he began lengthy discussions with his advisers about whom he should endorse. His top aides were split: among them, Joe Trippi, a senior adviser, strongly favored Mr. Obama; Harrison Hickman, his longtime friend and pollster, argued for a Clinton endorsement.
But the kinship between the two campaigns has become most plain by the migration of most of Mr. Edwards’s former staff members and aides to the Obama campaign.
David Bonior, Mr. Edwards’s former national campaign manager, has since endorsed Mr. Obama and was campaigning with him earlier today in
Michigan.
In an interview Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Bonior said Mr. Obama remained tight-lipped about the pending endorsement. “We need a change in Washington and both candidates had that as the cornerstone of their campaigns,” Mr. Bonior said. “Both candidacies were strongly appealing to workers, and social and economic justice. I think there was a natural inclination to have Edwards people go over to Obama.”
Terry McAuliffe, Clinton campaign chairman, made the following statement today in response to Mr. Edwards’ endorsement:
“We respect John Edwards, but as the voters of West Virginia showed last night, this thing is far from over.”
Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting.
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