OAKLAND, Calif. -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won the endorsement Monday of Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums, a widely admired black leader who anguished for months over whether to back Clinton's presidential rival Barack Obama. The endorsement came as Clinton and Dellums toured a vocational classroom at Laney College in Oakland, where Clinton announced that Dellums will head her campaign's Urban Policy Committee. The Clinton campaign spent months assiduously courting Dellums, a former U.S. Marine who served 27 years in Congress and once headed the powerful House Armed Services Committee. Dellums told associates he was excited by the energy of Obama's campaign, but he withheld his endorsement longer than many other black leaders. "Her commitment to urban communities and her belief that the federal government must build strong partnerships have earned her my support and endorsement," Dellums said in a prepared statement. "I thought long and hard about this decision and have concluded that our country needs Hillary's strength and experience to lead us forward." Clinton and Dellums met privately at the U.S. Conference of Mayors gathering in Los Angeles in June, and discussed how to address crime and violence in inner cities, aides to Dellums said. They also talked about Dellums' work leading a group that last year examined the impact of U.S. policies on men of black, Hispanic, Asian and American Indian descent. The Dellums Commission, as it became known, found that flawed government policies and negative stereotyping of minority men have limited their economic opportunities. Clinton, Obama and the other candidates in the Democratic presidential field have long dueled for support and dollars among blacks, one of the party's key voter blocs. And independent polls in California and nationwide suggest the black vote is divided, largely between Clinton and Obama.
© 2007 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
|
