Jan 27, 2008 11:14 pm US/Eastern
Report: Sen. Ted Kennedy To Endorse Obama
Announcement Follows Caroline Kennedy's Praise That Barack 'A President Like My Father'
NEW YORK (CBS) ―
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Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., left, and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., applaud during President George W. Bush's annual State of the Union address in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 23, 2007.
Mannie Garcia/AFP/Getty Images
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President John F. Kennedy delivers his inaugural address in January 1961.
AP
Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts will endorse Senate colleague Barack Obama for president, party officials confirmed Sunday.
The endorsement will be announced Monday in Washington, said the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak officially.
In a television interview Sunday, Obama would not answer questions about an endorsement from Kennedy.
"I'll let Ted Kennedy speak for himself. And nobody does it better," he said on ABC's "This Week." "But obviously, any of the Democratic candidates would love to have Ted Kennedy's support. And we have certainly actively sought it. And you know, I will let him make his announcement and his decision when he decides it's appropriate."
Kennedy's endorsement was highly sought after by all the Democratic candidates. Besides his status as a liberal icon and member of the Kennedy dynasty, Kennedy boasts a broad national fundraising and political network as well.
Kennedy is friendly with the Democratic candidates. Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton both serve on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and Kennedy is chairman. Former Sen. John Edwards partnered with Kennedy on patients' rights legislation in 2001, and Kennedy was a key White House ally when President Clinton was in Office.
"It's going to be difficult choosing," Kennedy said in October. "I've got a lot of friends who want to be president."
Kennedy's endorsement of Obama will follow that of his niece, Caroline, who backed the Illinois senator on Saturday. In an editorial in The New York Times, she said Obama could inspire Americans in the same way her father, President Kennedy, did.
"I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them," Caroline Kennedy wrote in an op-ed posted Saturday on the Web site of The New York Times. "But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president -- not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans."
Kennedy, who was four days shy of her 6th birthday when her father was assassinated, wrote that Obama "has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things."
And she appealed to other parents to pick a candidate who she said could invigorate a younger generation that is too often "hopeless, defeated and disengaged."
Kennedy wrote that she wants a president "who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved."
Barack Obama routed
Hillary Rodham Clinton in the racially charged South Carolina primary
Saturday night, regaining campaign momentum in the prelude to a Feb. 5
coast-to-coast competition for more than 1,600 Democratic National
Convention delegates.
"The
choice in this election is not about regions or religions or genders,"
Obama said at a boisterous victory rally. "It's not about rich versus
poor, young versus old and it's not about black versus white. It's
about the past versus the future."
The audience chanted "Race
doesn't matter" as it awaited Obama to make his appearance after
rolling up 55 percent of the vote in a three-way race.
(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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