Former Attorney General Eric Holder has endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Holder, who will campaign for Clinton in South Carolina ahead of Sunday’s debate in Charleston, praised Clinton’s plans to tackle a wide range of issues, such as gun control and college affordability.
Clinton “is the candidate that we need in the White House” to continue “the progress of President Obama,” Holder told the Associated Press in an interview published Wednesday, which first reported the endorsement.
The Clinton campaign announced Holder’s support in a statement to the AP and a CNN reporter tweeted his full statement.
“Our next president can’t shy away from building on the progress of President Obama, which is why Hillary Clinton is the candidate that we need in the White House,” Holder, who is now a partner at the law firm Covington & Burlington, said in the statement.
“I’ve seen her deal with the issues that will confront the next president firsthand, and she has bold plans to address police brutality, fight for commonsense reforms to our gun laws, get incomes rising, and make college affordable,” he said of Clinton, adding a Republican president would “tear down our progress on civil rights, health care and curbing gun violence.”
Holder, the first African-American attorney general, joins a handful of other past and present members of the Obama cabinet in supporting Clinton, including former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.
Current cabinet officials who have endorsed Clinton include Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, Labor Secretary Tom Perez and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
