Shriver Endorses Obama Before Super Tuesday

As Super Tuesday mania sets in, with 22 states including Alaska, California and New York all holding nominating contests February 5, presidential candidates and their supporters fanned out across the country for a final weekend of frenzied campaigning. The massive Super Tuesday contest, the result of many states moving up the dates of their balloting, will be the largest one-day vote in American primary history. With some 1,600 Democratic and 950 Republican delegates at stake, the day could determine both party’s nominees.

On the Republican side, Sen. John McCain holds a commanding 42-24% lead over former Gov. Mitt Romney. Meanwhile Shriver’s surprise endorsement of Obama, her husband, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, is backing McCain, could make big waves. “If Barack Obama was a state, he’d be California. Diverse. Open. Smart. Independent. Bucks tradition. Innovative. Inspirational. Dreamer. Leader,” Shriver, told a cheering crowd at UCLA. At the same rally, Oprah Winfrey told female voters it was okay to vote for a man. “I’m not a traitor. I’m just following my own truth,” said Winfrey.

Meanwhile former President Bill Clinton spent Sunday in California speaking in African American churches on behalf of his wife’s campaign. He urged the congregations to “find a way to choose without division.” “We respect the choices that you make in this election,” he said. “If you can’t be for her, we honor that.”

McCain’s weekend stump speeches took aim at his Democratic rivals, and barely mentioned Romney. “There’s a battle for the heart and the soul of the Republican party,” McCain told voters in Chicago this weekend. “Are we going to take a sharp left turn in our party, get as close as we can to Hillary Clinton without being Hillary Clinton?” McCain criticized the Democratic candidates and their stance on the war in Iraq. Clinton and Obama “want to surrender. They want to wave the white flag.”