South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn said the Congressional Black Caucus will endorse Hillary Clinton on Thursday but he has yet to decide whether to back the former secretary of state or rival Bernie Sanders.
“I will follow their lead and make a decision sometime soon since they are endorsing today. I did not want to get out in front of them,” the No. 3 House Democrat told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on “New Day.”
“I’m going to make my decision based upon past record and future possibilities, because campaigns are about the future, and who can best deliver what I would call a growth of President Obama’s foundation that he’s laid for all of us to build upon,” Clyburn said.
Clyburn, former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said he will huddle with his friends and family about an endorsement this weekend.
Though much has been made of the at-times fraught relationship Clyburn has had with the Clintons — he spoke out in 2008 after Bill Clinton made controversial remarks about Barack Obama during that heated Democratic primary — the South Carolina congressman said he holds no ill will.
The former president was merely defending his spouse, Clyburn said.
But the congressman pushed back on critiques that Sanders has disparaged Obama’s record. He also disagreed with those who have questioned the Vermont senator’s party loyalties since he spent his career as an independent who caucuses with Democrats, rather than as a Democrat.
“I don’t have anything critical to say about him,” Clyburn said. “And I’ve never looked upon him as being anything other than an independent Democrat. Now, he calls himself a democratic socialist or something of that sort, but he can call himself what he will.”
Ultimately, Clyburn said, he will support the candidate who has a track record of advocating for the interests of African-Americans.
“We say down in South Carolina all the time that the best way to tell what a person will do is to look at what he or she has done,” he said.
The formal CBC endorsement is scheduled for 11 a.m.