Clinton wins endorsement of civil rights leader John Lewis

Shannon McCaffrey

ATLANTA — Hillary Rodham Clinton won the endorsement last Friday of Rep. John Lewis, a hero of the civil rights struggle, in a blow to Barack Obama in the battle for black support for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“Without reservation or any hesitation I am proud to endorse Hillary Clinton to be the next Democratic nominee to be president of the United States,” Lewis said at an appearance with Clinton at Paschal’s Restaurant, an Atlanta landmark of the civil rights movement.

The New York senator called the Georgia congressman one of the people she admires most in the world.

“I see my campaign as a continuation of John Lewis’ life work,” the New York senator said.

Clinton spoke that night at a banquet honoring a program to increase voter registration in neighboring South Carolina.

The South Carolina Voter Education Project was founded in 1965 to overcome white Democrats’ efforts to keep blacks from voting. The South Carolina program is the only one still operating, said Lewis, who spoke before Clinton at the event in Columbia.

During the “last two presidential elections, we have seen the right to vote tampered with and outright denied to too many of our fellow citizens,” Clinton said.

She called for reforms including making Election Day a federal holiday and allowing felons who have completed their sentences to vote again in federal elections.

Clinton said she is against laws requiring voters to have picture IDs. adding that they are meant to exclude eligible voters instead of cutting fraud. They amount to a modern-day poll tax, she said.

“We have got to stop this rollback of voter rights in America,” Clinton said.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton, responding to Lewis’ endorsement of Clinton, said: “Barack Obama has great admiration for John Lewis and understands his long relationship with Bill Clinton. He looks forward to his support when Barack Obama is the nominee.”

Obama has the backing of another civil rights leader, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who said in March that the Illinois senator has his vote.

The son of sharecroppers, Lewis, 67, rose to fame as one of the “Freedom Riders” promoting civil rights in the South. He was badly beaten by police during a nonviolent civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in 1961, and still bears scars from the experience.

Lewis also served as director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the major civil rights organizations of the era. He was elected to Congress in 1986.

Blacks make up about one in 10 voters overall. They are reliably loyal Democrats, voting nearly 9-to-1 for the party’s candidates in the 2004 and 2006 elections. And while blacks are few in the early voting states of New Hampshire and Iowa, they comprise about half the Democratic primary voters in South Carolina, another early voting state.

But blacks are split down the middle over Obama and Clinton in the presidential race, seeing both as on their side, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll taken in late September. At the same time, blacks and whites have starkly different perceptions of Obama’s credentials — blacks are significantly more satisfied than whites that the youthful Illinois senator has sufficient experience to be president.

Georgia holds its primary on Feb. 5.

While Clinton led Obama among whites by 35 percent to 18 percent in the AP-Ipsos poll, blacks were essentially evenly divided, 40 percent for Obama and 38 percent for Clinton.

While Obama may be the first sitting member of the Congressional Black Caucus to run for president in more than 30 years, Clinton has the edge in endorsements among the group. Lewis’ endorsement brings Clinton’s supporters in the 43-member group to 14, compared to Obama’s 13.

Associated Press Writer Jim Davenport in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this story.

(Associated Press)