Arnie: ‘I’ll be backing John McCain’

John McCain will today receive another useful endorsement in time for Super Tuesday when Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, endorses the Arizona senator at a joint press conference in Los Angeles.

The backing of the most powerful Republican in the delegate-rich state will be a massive boost for McCain, and coming on the heels of former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani's endorsement yesterday it suggests that the 71-year-old is in prime position in the country's two most populous states.

Schwarzenegger, who has established a reputation as a unifying force in a traditionally Democratic state, is married to Maria Shriver, the niece of John F Kennedy. McCain becomes the third candidate endorsed by the far-flung First Family of American politics.

On Sunday, Caroline Kennedy, the only surviving child of JFK, came out for Barack Obama, saying he could be "a president like my father" in an article for the New York Times. The next day her uncle and JFK's youngest brother, Ted Kennedy, also endorsed Obama, and accompanied him to George Bush's State of the Union address that night. But the children of Robert, the middle of the three brothers who ran for president in 1968 and was assassinated like his brother, have backed Hillary Clinton.