Obama Gets a Boost From a Kennedy Ally

Because of his status as a former national party chairman, Paul Kirk's endorsement of Barack Obama highlights a mini-trend: he’s the second former chairman in as many days to throw his support behind Obama. (Joe Andrew went yesterday).

Kirk's move is hardly surprising when you consider that his closest ally in politics is Ted Kennedy, one of Obama's top supporters. In fact, although the Obama campaign announced the endorsement today, the Clinton campaign’s tally of superdelegates already had Kirk in the Obama column.

The 70-year-old Kirk is a Massachusetts native (his father was a justice on the state Supreme Judicial Court) and he still has a home in Marstons Mills, not much more than a stone's throw from the Kennedy family estate in Hyannisport. He got his start in politics with Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign, then joined Ted Kennedy's Senate staff, working as his special assistant for most of the 1970's. In 1980, Kirk chaired Kennedy's unsuccessful presidential campaign.

In 1985, with crucial support from Kennedy and his organized labor allies, Kirk was elected chairman of the Democratic National Committee, a post he held through the 1988 election. The highlight of his tenure was the 1986 midterm elections, when his party ended the G.O.P.'s six-year hold on the Senate.

It seems likely that, thanks to his loyalty to and friendship with Kennedy, the Kirk endorsement could have been delivered pretty much at any time. But doing so today is strategically important to the Obama campaign, as they recover from their week from hell. The effect of back-to-back endorsements from former national chairmen – even one who left office 20 years ago – could instill confidence in wavering voters.

An interesting side-note to Kirk's move is that it seems to put him in tandem with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker who is officially neutral but who is widely believed to be backing Obama. Many of her public comments have been very helpful to his cause.

It was Pelosi who, back in 1985, nearly derailed Kirk's bid for the party chairmanship. A former California state chairwoman, Pelosi was Kirk's main competition for the top D.N.C. slot. She waged an aggressive campaign, accusing him of seeking the chairmanship to bolster Kennedy's prospects for an '88 presidential campaign. When the vote neared, Pelosi realized that she was several dozen crucial votes behind Kirk. The day before the election she abruptly pulled out --"Many of you did not think the right message would go out if a woman was elected chairman," she declared -- and threw her support behind Terry Sanford, the former North Carolina governor and Duke University President. It still wasn't enough, and Kirk beat Sanford by 50 votes.

Finally, in this intra-party fight, it seems like they’re on the same team.