By Jonathan Allen, CQ Staff

New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton picked up a marquee endorsement in the presidential race late Tuesday from Rep. John P. Murtha , the dean of the Pennsylvania congressional delegation and a leading critic of the Iraq War.

Murtha, who has represented a portion of western Pennsylvania since becoming the first Vietnam veteran elected to Congress in 1974, said Clinton is best positioned to make policy on health care, education, the economy and the war.

“I know that Sen. Clinton has a similar position that I have in regards to the war in Iraq,” Murtha said in a switch from a year ago, when he told a HuffingtonPost blogger, “I don’t know where she is” on the war.

Clinton’s rival for the Democratic nomination, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama , has staked much of his primary campaign on his argument that he showed better foreign policy judgment than Clinton by denouncing the war when he was a state senator.

Like Murtha, Clinton voted for the 2002 authorization of the use of military force in Iraq and later became a critic of the war. She has said she would begin drawing down troops within 60 days of taking office if she is elected president.

Murtha’s statement came the same day Obama delivered his first major address on race in an effort to halt the political damage he has incurred since last week when video surfaced of his pastor condemning the United States and whites.

Clinton is expected to do well in Murtha’s Johnstown-based 12th District, where Democrats tend to be conservative.

Murtha and his homestate Democratic colleague, Robert A. Brady , told CQ Politics last month that they might be part of an endorsement bloc, but a Brady aide said the Philadelphia congressman is not ready to back a candidate.

Murtha becomes one of the few close allies of Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., to pick Clinton over Obama. Much of Pelosi’s inner circle — including Reps. John B. Larson and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, and George Miller , Anna G. Eshoo and Xavier Becerra of California — are in Obama’s camp.