A blog for The Chronicle to cover the 2008 presidential election, of which Hofstra University plays a unique part as host of one of the presidential debates. Students will cover the election in real time.

June 4, 2008

Report: Clinton to suspend campaign, endorse Obama Friday

The New York Times reported on its Web site that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) will suspend her presidential campaign and endorse her rival, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) at an event on Friday, possibly in New York City.

--Samuel Rubenfeld

In final rally, Clinton does not concede


Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) speaks to supporters in Midtown Manhattan on the final night of the Democratic primary season. (Video provided by MSNBC.com.)

By Samuel Rubenfeld
Senior News Editor

NEW YORK--After all 57 nominating contests, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) clinched the Democratic party's nomination for president by claiming the majority of delegates and declared victory in front of nearly 20,000 people in Minnesota, but at Sen. Hillary Clinton's (D-N.Y.) event in the basement gym at Baruch College in the Park Avenue South area of Manhattan, she delivered a speech more defiant than mollifying.

Clinton was introduced by chief campaign strategist Terry McCauliffe, who said she was going to be "the next president of the United States," despite the torrent of delegates that endorsed Obama earlier in the day. (Obama began Tuesday needing 40 delegates to get the nomination, and before the polls closed in South Dakota, he only needed four.)

"This has been a long campaign, and I will be making no decisions tonight," she said to several hundred supporters here following the projection of a surprise win in the South Dakota primary.

She did not recognize Obama's delegate victory, but did his overall accomplishments: "It has been an honor to contest the primaries with him," Clinton said.

Addressing the question of what she now wants,
Clinton said, "I want the nearly 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected, to be heard and no longer be invisible."

Her supporters at the rally were just as defiant. "I hope she goes all the way," said Leslie Flug of Brooklyn. "No one else deserves it."

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