A crowd of Illinois Democratic Sen. Barack Obama supporters gathered at Serrano's Restaurant on Monday afternoon to hear words of encouragement from previous White House resident Caroline Kennedy.
The Obama campaign organized the event at the Riverside eatery to have Obama-supporter Kennedy speak to about 100 people. Several in the crowd wore buttons that read "I would vote for Kennedy if I was 21."
"I've never had a candidate who inspired me the way people say my father inspired them - until Barack Obama came along," Kennedy told the crowd.
Campaign spokesman Nick Kimball said it hosted Kennedy because of her "unique voice as the only living child of President Kennedy."
Kennedy said she believes that Americans want a president who can inspire bipartisanship and national unity.
She also addressed the charges that the Obama campaign has pushed style at the expense of substance. She said Obama has pulled new people into politics from across the ideological
spectrum.
"Senator Obama's campaign has already changed this political process," she said.
But Kennedy said Obama knows how to translate these electoral developments into policy changes.
"My Uncle Teddy wouldn't be supporting Obama if he was not absolutely convinced that he was the best candidate to get health care reform passed in his first term," she said.
Kennedy used part of the speech to convince women in the audience that Obama understood their concerns. She noted that both she and Obama have been raised by single mothers and that his policies reflect an understanding that women should not have to choose between work and family.
"When women really vote with their hearts and minds," she said, "they don't just vote for themselves, but for their families and the future."
Alegria Arce-Hibbetts, an Austin resident and UT alumna, said she is thrilled that Kennedy supports Obama and hopes her children would have the same opportunity she did under John F. Kennedy to experience an inspirational presidency.
Austin resident and UT alumna Laura Quintanilla said she liked that Kennedy touched on the inspirational nature of Obama's campaign and that the endorsement has a lot of weight.
"It means a great deal that she doesn't do this in every election," she said.
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