Ohio's top superdelegate speaks

The morning after Sen. Barack Obama won a decisive victory in the North Carolina primary and Sen. Hillary Clinton narrowly defeated Obama in Indiana's primary, Sen. Sherrod Brown is still undecided about who he'll support.

Brown, a Democrat from Lorain in northern Ohio, is among the last remaining super delegates who have not endorsed a candidate. He's the highest ranking super delegate in Ohio to remain uncommitted.

"I will probably not endorse until the primary's are over in early June," Brown said this morning, speaking at a breakfast forum sponsored by the Johns Hopkins SAIS Center on Politics & Foreign Relations.

Last night's primary results have put pressure on some super delegates to make a decision, but Brown said he still isn't ready to announce who he's supporting.

"I don't know. I really don't know," Brown told The Enquirer after the breakfast. "You all think I have this plan and I've already decided. I'm not sure. I'm undecided. I mean, I'm talking to both of them. I'm talking to their staffs."

Brown said President Clinton called him at home recently and Chelsea Clinton has called his wife, Connie Schultz of The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer, who is a Hillary Clinton supporter. His said his chief of staff and one daughter also are supporting Clinton while his mother, brother and two daughters are supporting Obama.

Brown, a longtime opponent of NAFTA and other trade deals, said he made a decision early on not to endorse because he wanted to talk about trade and Ohio and jobs.

"I spent much of 2007 … lobbying the presidential candidates on those issues," he said.

Also at the breakfast:

-- Brown said doesn't think it'll lead to a brokered convention in which super delegates would select the Democratic presidential nominee behind closed doors.

"It's going to work itself out," he said. "I never believed it'd go to the convention. I also didn't think it would go this long."

-- Brown doesn't think the protracted primary has been bad for Democrats.

"As this is played out, it's shown the big ideas and the energy on the Democratic side. … You can look at what happened with turnout in every single state," he said.

The primary also has "gotten the country used to seeing a woman or an African American as being a significant, major candidate," he added. "That was good for the country and I think that's good for the Democratic party."

-- He supports having Obama and Hillary on the same ticket.

"I'd still like to see them run together, but I think that's looking less and less likely," he said.

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CLICK HERE to listen to Brown's remarks yourself. Audio courtesy of Johns Hopkins SAIS.