A top supporter of John Edwards told JTA that he had no immediate plans to endorse another candidate.
Edwards announced the end of his campaign for the Democratic nomination on Wednesday afternoon.
The former North Carolina senator is not ready at this point to endorse either of his rivals, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) or Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), said Marc Stanley, the National Jewish Democratic Council’s vice chairman, who is based in Texas. Instead, Stanley said, Edwards would continue to press his issue of combating poverty.
“I think he’s going to continue his work to fight poverty and to increase awareness of the two Americas widening in this country,” Stanley said.
Edwards consistently trailed a respectable third in the early primaries. He was tied with Obama in second place in a fall poll among Jewish Democrats, who tended to favor Clinton in greater numbers than other Democrats.
Exit polls from Florida’s primary on Tuesday suggested Edwards’ Jewish support was dropping. Democrats voted 58 percent for Clinton, 26 percent for Obama and 13 percent for Edwards, according to the exit polls.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
