Washington - One-time presidential hopeful US Senator Chris Dodd gave his blessings Tuesday to Barack Obama, the lead contender for the Democratic Party's nomination. Dodd is the first former 2008 Democratic candidate to endorse Obama or his chief rival, former first lady Hillary Clinton, in the closely-fought battle for the nomination.
Clinton and Obama are slated to face off later Tuesday in a major debate before the next state party contests on Tuesday. This week has seen a harsh ramping up of charges and counter-charges between the two campaigns.
The candidates have been wooing former senator Jim Edwards, the third most popular Democratic candidate who dropped out of the race earlier this month. Edwards has a handful of delegates that could help decide the race at the convention in August, while Dodd never had a strong showing.
Dodd called for Clinton and Obama to lay down their swords and allow one of them to go forward, to present a unified Democratic front and recapture the White House.
Republican Senator John McCain already has the Republican nomination sewed up.
"This is a moment of unity in our country, a time when we need to come together as the Democratic Party and get behind a candidacy that expresses the hopes, aspirations and ambitions of million and millions of Americans," Dodd was quoted as saying in the Washington Post online.
He said divisiveness was "devastating in the longer term" and chided both sides of the campaign for ramping up verbal rhetoric this week.
"I know the temptation of campaigns, beyond the ability of the candidates themselves to control it," Dodd said. "We have witnessed a little bit of that here, and I'm worried about it."
There was a fracas on Monday over the resurfacing of a photo published when Obama visited Kenya in 2006. In it, Obama wears the turban and garb of a Somali Muslim tribesman in northern Kenya. The image resurrected past smear attempts at the Islamic beliefs of Obama's Kenyan father and his own middle name of Hussein.
Obama attends a Christian church in Chicago. It was not clear who was re-circulating the photos.
Obama's campaign accused the Clinton campaign of "shameful, offensive fear-mongering." The Clinton campaign said Obama's campaign "should be ashamed ... to suggest that a photo of him wearing traditional Somali clothing is divisive."
The next Obama-Clinton faceoff in the presidential primaries are on March 4 in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont. The Ohio and Texas races are seen as key to whether Clinton can come back from 11 straight losses in state contests.
