By The Beachwood Olympic Smackdown Affairs Desk
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Back Story
– “U.S. Sen. Barack Obama today endorsed Mayor Daley’s re-election bid, asserting that City Hall corruption is being cleaned up and that Chicago has ‘blossomed’ under the mayor’s ‘innovative’ and decisive leadership,” the Sun-Times reported on January 22, 2007.
– “Hours after U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) announced plans to seek his party’s nomination for President, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley endorsed the freshman senator’s campaign for the White House,” the Tribune reported on February 10, 2007
And back to that Sun-Times story:
“In August 2005, Obama nearly ran into trouble with Daley when he hedged on whether he’d support the mayor for re-election in light of the corruption investigations at City Hall.
“Asked then if he planned to support the mayor or if the corruption probes might have given him pause, the senator replied, ‘What’s happened – some of the reports I’ve seen in your newspaper, I think, give me huge pause.’
“An hour later, he called the Sun-Times saying he wanted to clarify his remarks. Obama said the mayor was ‘obviously going through a rough patch right now.’ But he also said Chicago has ‘never looked better’ and that ‘significant progress has been made on a variety of fronts.’ The senator said then it was ‘way premature’ to talk about endorsements because the mayor had not yet announced his candidacy.”
Posted on July 24, 2009