Birmingham, Alabama (ANTARA News) – Senator Ted Kennedy, the dean of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing, is planning to formally endorse Barack Obama’s presidential quest, sources close to the campaign said Sunday.
The support from the influential Kennedy family’s most prominent politician gave a significant boost to the 46-year-old Illinois senator’s quest to become the first black US president, and came a day after Obama defeated rival Hillary Clinton in the South Carolina state primary.
Kennedy was to make his announcement at a rally at Washington’s American University on Monday, accompanied by his niece Caroline Kennedy, the sole surviving child of John F. Kennedy, a source close to the campaign told AFP.
The Washington news website Politico.com also reported that Kennedy had directly turned down former president Bill Clinton’s appeal for an endorsement for his wife Hillary, the national front-runner.
Obama said he would reserve comment until Kennedy, the Massachusetts senator and brother of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, made an official announcement.
“Ted Kennedy has not officially endorsed my candidacy,” Obama said in response to repeated prodding from reporters aboard a plane to Birmingham,
Alabama.
“I’ve had ongoing conversations with Ted since I got into this race and at the point where he is clear about what he’s doing and wants to make it public I will let Ted make it public.”
Separately, Caroline issued her own endorsement of Obama, comparing him to her father, who was president from 1961 to his assassination in 1963.
“Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves … and imagine that together we can do great things,” she wrote in The New York Times on Sunday.
“Senator Obama is inspiring my children, my parents’ grandchildren, with
that sense of possibility,” she said in the article titled “A President Like my
Father.”
Obama acknowledged Caroline Kennedy’s support by calling it “an extraordinary honor … For somebody I think who has been such an important part of our national imagination and generally shies away from day-to-day politics to step out like that is something I’m very grateful for.” (*)