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Obama Wins Kerry
Endorsement While Republicans Jostle for Pole Position

Obama Wins Kerry
Endorsement While Republicans Jostle for Pole Position

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Presidential hopeful Barack Obama on Thursday won the endorsement of John Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, giving his campaign a boost against Hillary Rodham Clinton in an increasingly tight race. The field of Democratic candidates narrowed Thursday as New Mexico governor Bill Richardson announced he is ending his bid for the nomination after poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two critical contests where Obama and Clinton split wins.

Presidential hopeful Barack Obama on Thursday won the endorsement of John Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, giving his campaign a boost against Hillary Rodham Clinton in an increasingly tight race.

The field of Democratic candidates narrowed Thursday as New Mexico governor Bill Richardson announced he is ending his bid for the nomination after poor showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two critical contests where Obama and Clinton split wins.

Obama, vying to become the first black U.S. president, and Clinton, who wants to be the first female president, now face just a handful of races before February 5, when primaries and caucuses in 22 states form the equivalent of a possibly decisive nationwide primary. Challenging them as the only other significant Democratic candidate left standing after Iowa and New Hampshire is former North Carolina U.S. senator John Edwards; he has vowed to stay in the race and is counting on the January 26 contest in South Carolina, where he was born, to even the score.

The Republicans, meanwhile, face the most wide-open presidential campaign in a half century, with both Baptist preacher-turned-politician Mike Huckabee and veteran U.S. senator John McCain securing wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, respectively, but bracing for challenges from Mitt Romney, in Tuesday's primary election in Romney's home state of Michigan, and Rudy Giuliani, in Florida on January 26.

McCain, who won New Hampshire's independent voters with his message of experience in national security, also is looking at Michigan and at South Carolina, a state that spoiled his presidential hopes eight years ago. But Huckabee, who has so far largely worked in tandem with McCain to deflect Romney's onslaught in the run-ups to the first two crucial races, has not discounted a change in strategy to neutralize the veteran Arizona senator.

''I don't see us going out there and taking the gloves off,'' Huckabee said of the prospects of a tough encounter with McCain, a former U.S. Navy pilot shot down over Hanoi, Vietnam, and held more than five years as a prisoner of war.

The two candidates appeal to different segments of the Republican Party, and McCain has been quick to accept that dichotomy.

''The Republican establishment has never embraced me in my entire life. But I think we just proved that we can get the support of enough to win an election,'' he told a rally in Grand Rapids, Mich. He added he would try to remind evangelical voters, like those who gave Huckabee victory in Iowa, ''that my social conservative record has been consistent and unchanging.''

New Hampshire win or no, he said, ''I'm always an underdog. I always want to be called an underdog.''

Romney, a millionaire businessman and former Massachusetts governor, could be the spoiler, if not in his party's February 19 South Carolina primary, then four days earlier in Michigan, where he grew up and his father was governor. McCain won Michigan in 2000.

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Thursday found Romney in third place in South Carolina, with 17% support, behind McCain's 25% and Huckabee's 18%.

He has shifted his focus to the Midwest state (eschewing South Carolina) as well as to Florida, where Giuliani has pressed hard to lobby the community of New Yorkers who call the Southern state home in the winter.

Injecting another measure of uncertainty in the Republican race is New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. While the billionaire repeatedly has denied presidential aspirations, he disclosed he had authorized polling and voter analysis in all 50 states.

Bringing up the rear are Ron Paul and actor-politician Fred Thompson, whose presidential bid has so far mirrored his former role as the district attorney in television's hit series Law & Order : cameos with punch lines.

In the Democratic race, Richardson's departure follows that of U.S. senators Christopher Dodd and Joe Biden. With the contest's narrowing, Edwards emerges as the spoiler, and Kerry's endorsement of Obama, announced in South Carolina, seems as much a gesture of support for Obama as a slap in the face directed at the former North Carolina senator who served as Kerry's 2004 running mate.

Quoting a black American hero, Kerry declared, ''Martin Luther King Jr. said the time is always right to do what is right. And I'm here in South Carolina because this is the right time to share with you, to make sure that we know that I have the confidence...and that Barack Obama can be, will be, and should be the next president of the United States.''

He said he believes ''more than anyone else, Barack Obama can help our country turn the page and get America moving by uniting and ending the division we have faced.''

Edwards, who finished a weak third in New Hampshire, has set his sights on South Carolina and has pitched himself as a native son -- a push in an agricultural and industrial state that falls neatly with his populist campaign.

''It's the first time we've had a primary that has a large African-American population. So I think it's a place that's a good test for all three of us,'' Edwards said.

''I'm not someone who has to have somebody explain to them what's happening with the mills closing, jobs leaving, what's happening with the school system in South Carolina,'' Edwards said. ''You need someone who understands it personally.'' Edwards's father was a mill hand in North Carolina, but the candidate earned millions of dollars as a trial lawyer.

Obama, whose loss in New Hampshire stunned even members of Clinton's campaign, has predicted that the coming races will be exceedingly unpredictable, and the tone could become decidedly more hostile, a marked departure from the relatively benign campaigns the Democrats have run compared to their Republican counterparts.

''We have to make sure that we take it to them just like they take it to us,'' Obama said Wednesday about Clinton's win and attacks heaped on him by her husband, former president Bill Clinton, who has complained that the Illinois senator has largely been spared the scrutiny his wife has endured. (AP)

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