Prometheus 6

Ms. Tubbs Jones, who represents suburbs and areas of Cleveland in Congress, first endorsed Bill Clinton in 1992, has worked with Mrs. Clinton, and decided to back her more than a year before Mrs. Clinton announced her candidacy.

“In politics, we all understand that the only thing you have is your word,” Ms. Tubbs Jones said in an interview. “You make a commitment to a person and you stick with them through thick and thin. My commitment is thick, and I’m in there for the long run.”

You know what? I can respect that. I'm actually okay with folks dancing with the one whut brung 'em. I do hope the folks certain CBC members represent start looking at how closely those members' votes accord with their own.

Iowa Caucus Results Put Pressure on Black Leaders for Endorsements
By JANNY SCOTT

Before the Iowa caucus returns were in on Thursday, the phones started ringing in the home of Fletcher N. Smith Jr., a black state legislator from Greenville, S.C. Like other black leaders, Mr. Smith finds himself being courted so assiduously by the campaigns of Senators 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 advocate, 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. And Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio, who is active in the Clinton campaign, quickly put in a call to another black politician — and fellow Delta Sigma Theta sorority member — whose candidate had just dropped out.

Mr. Obama’s eight-point victory margin in overwhelmingly white Iowa changed the landscape of the presidential campaign, whittling away at doubts that a black 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 Mrs. Clinton in particular, fend off the possibility of black supporters defecting to the Obama camp.

Advisers to Mrs. Clinton and former Senator John Edwards played down any effects from Mr. Obama’s victory in Iowa. But one prominent black supporter of Mr. Obama, Representative 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 Senator Clinton, they’re in a very dicey position right now,” Mr. 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, Mr. Smith, the state legislator from South Carolina who had been supporting Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. 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.”