Obama win puts new premium on black supporters

Before the Iowa caucus returns were in Thursday, the phones started ringing in the home of Fletcher Smith Jr., a black state legislator from Greenville, S.C. Like other black leaders, Smith finds himself being courted so assiduously by the campaigns of Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama that he said he had thought, "Gosh, maybe I should run for president."

In New York, the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil-rights activist, said he was called all Thursday night by "either the candidate themselves or someone high up in the top three campaigns" suggesting he make up his mind.

Obama's 8-point victory margin in overwhelmingly white Iowa changed the landscape of the presidential campaign, whittling away at doubts that a biracial African-American candidate could be elected.

In so doing, it has reinvigorated the scramble by the campaigns to win over uncommitted black leaders, shore up allegiances and, in the case of Clinton in particular, fend off the possibility of defections to the Obama camp, even though polls released Sunday showed his campaign gaining momentum.

A poll conducted by CNN/WMUR-TV gave Obama a 10-point lead over Clinton, while a USA/Today Gallup Poll showed that his lead had grown to 13 percentage points.

Advisers to Clinton and former Sen. John Edwards played down any effects from Obama's victory in Iowa. But one prominent black supporter of Obama, Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama, called this moment "a very precarious time for the Clinton campaign."

"For black elected officials who either stayed out of this race or have supported Clinton, they're in a very dicey position right now," Davis said, "because their black constituents are about to move overwhelmingly toward Barack Obama."

Outright defections may be unlikely, he said, but he predicted some black Clinton supporters would become "magically unavailable when the Clinton campaign calls them."

Asked whether he agreed with that assessment, Smith, the state legislator from South Carolina who had been supporting Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware until he ended his campaign after losing in Iowa, said, "I'm not going to turn my back on the Joe Bidens or the Hillary Clintons or the Joe Liebermans of this world simply because they're white and we have a black candidate running."

Black leaders, like black voters, have been split in their support for the candidates. The Congressional Black Caucus is divided roughly evenly between Obama and Clinton supporters. A few members are backing Edwards, and a few remain uncommitted, including the chairwoman, Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Michigan, as well as Reps. Maxine Waters of California and James Clyburn of South Carolina, the third-ranking Democrat in the House leadership.

Families, too, are split: the Rev. Jesse Jackson has endorsed Obama (though he has not been uncritical), and his son, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Illinois, is Obama's national co-chairman. But the wife of the elder Jackson is backing Clinton.

Many younger black leaders such as Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Mayor Cory Booker of Newark are active in Obama's campaign. But other black officials have endorsed Clinton and Edwards for reasons that have included Obama's inexperience, doubts about his electability and, for some, longtime ties to Clinton and her husband, former President Clinton.

"Hillary has great affection among African Americans," the elder Jackson said. "My wife has known Hillary more than 20 years. Her work with the Children's Defense Fund, Marian Wright Edelman, legal assistance for the poor — these are fairly strong ties. Most people I know are in this kind of one-two posture: Barack one, Hillary two. Hillary one, Barack two. It's not a hostile decision that many people have made."

In South Carolina, which will hold its primary Jan. 26, Leon Howard, chairman of the South Carolina black legislative caucus and an Edwards adviser, said he got on the phone around 11 p.m. Thursday and began calling colleagues who had backed Biden and Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who also dropped out of the race after Iowa. Howard focused on legislators from rural areas where he said there was a need for infrastructure, such as trauma hospitals, that a candidate might promise to address and where Edwards had campaigned heavily.

The Edwards campaign is counting on Edwards doing well in South Carolina, where he was born and where they contend that "many African-American voters would prefer a white candidate with South Carolina ties to a black candidate from Illinois."

Smith, the Biden supporter, was watching the election returns in his living room with his wife and son, who are Obama supporters. (His other son, a student at Yale Law School, is supporting Clinton.) He got his first call of the evening from an upstate South Carolina coordinator for the Obama campaign. Then came one from a fellow state representative from Spartanburg who is working for Clinton.

"We're going to make history as Democrats one way or another," he said, adding: "To me, it's not a question of race. It's a question of who's going to be the one to unify the country. I think that both of those candidates have the potential of doing it in a very dignified, professional way. I'm not going to vote for Sen. Obama simply because he is a black candidate who happens to be the front-runner."