Former NY Mayor Koch Endorses Obama

Politico: Former New York Mayor Ed Koch, who endorsed and worked for George W. Bush in 2004, is endorsing Obama today, NY1 first reported.

I asked Koch just now what prompted the move.

"The designation of Palin to be vice president," he said. "She's scary."

He said he was alarmed by the report that she'd triggered a conflict with the local librarian in Wasilla, Alaska by inquiring about the possibility of banning books.

"Any time someone goes to the library and says, 'I want to ban books,' and the librarian says 'no,' and she threatens to fire them -- that's scary," he said.

(Palin at the time said she was just inquiring about the library's policy on banning books, with no aim of actually banning any. "It was a rhetorical question -- nothing more," the McCain-Palin campaign said in a memo yesterday. And no books were banned, the town says.)