Clinton still No. 1 among insiders
WASHINGTON – Hillary Rodham Clinton retains her lead among suddenly critical Democratic Party insiders even as Barack Obama builds up his delegate margin with primary and caucus victories across the country, according to an Associated Press survey.
Of the 796 lawmakers, governors and party officials who are Democratic superdelegates, Clinton had 243 and Obama 156. That edge was responsible for Clinton’s overall advantage in the pursuit of delegates to secure the party’s nomination for president. According to the AP’s latest tally, Clinton has a total of 1,136 delegates and Obama has 1,108, following Obama’s victory Sunday in Maine’s caucuses. A candidate must get 2,025 delegates to capture the nomination.
The numbers illustrate not only the remarkable proximity between the two candidates, but also the extraordinary influence superdelegates could wield in determining who becomes the nominee. Both campaigns are aggressively pursuing superdelegates, trumpeting their endorsements the moment they are secured.
“I told my wife I’m probably going to be pretty popular for a couple months,” said Richard Ray, a superdelegate and president of the Georgia chapter of the AFL-CIO. Ray said he will remain undecided because the labor federation has made no endorsement.
“If they endorse, then I will, too,” Ray said.
The national party has named about 720 of the 796 superdelegates. The remainder will be chosen at state party conventions in the spring and summer.
For the first time since the AP began contacting superdelegates last fall, more than half of them – 399 – have endorsed a candidate. The remaining 320 or so said they are either undecided or uncommitted, making them the subject of intense lobbying.
With Clinton and Obama trading wins and loses as the primary and caucus season unfolds, the role of the superdelegates has been magnified and is causing anxiety inside and outside the campaigns. If the current snapshot of the race holds, superdelegates could decide the nomination in favor of one candidate even if the other receives more votes in the party primaries and caucuses.
Donna Brazile, a top Democratic National Committee member and manager of Al Gore’s 2000 campaign, said party elders have a role to play, but voters should lead the way.
“I don’t want to superimpose my personal views; I want to reflect the will of the voters,” she said Sunday, noting that as a superdelegate she is torn between Obama and Clinton. “Honestly, I don’t want to decide this.”
Obama weighed in Friday, telling reporters that voters should determine who superdelegates support, even as his campaign actively courted them.
“My strong belief is that if we end up with the most states and the most pledged delegates and the most voters in the country, then it would be problematic for political insiders to overturn the judgment of the voters,” he said. “I think that should be the guiding approach to determining who will be the nominee.”
Clinton, speaking to reporters Saturday, argued that superdelegates should make up their own minds and pointedly noted that Obama has the endorsements of superdelegates John Kerry and Edward Kennedy, both senators from Massachusetts, a state whose primary Clinton won.
“Superdelegates are by design supposed to exercise independent judgment,” she said. “If Senator Obama and his campaign continue to push this position, which is to the contrary of what the definition of superdelegates has historically been, I will look forward to receiving the support of Senator Kerry and Senator Kennedy.”
The Democratic Party introduced superdelegates to the nominating process after the 1980 election with the idea of giving a voice to elected officials and party elders who had a stake in who became the party’s standard bearer. In 1984, Walter Mondale relied on superdelegates to distance himself from Gary Hart and secure the Democratic nomination. Mondale went on to lose to Ronald Reagan. Since then, primaries and caucuses have determined the nominee without superdelegates making a difference.
Clinton, meanwhile, shook up her presidential campaign Sunday, replacing campaign manager and longtime aide Patti Solis Doyle with her former White House chief of staff Maggie Williams.
The move came on a day when Obama’s victory in Maine completed a decisive weekend sweep of Democratic contests in four states that gave the senator from Illinois renewed momentum heading into Tuesday’s contests in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
The change at the top of the Clinton campaign has been talked about since last month’s Iowa caucuses, in which the senator from New York placed third and immediately lost her front-runner status. Still, it came as a surprise to even some senior advisers.
After mounting tensions inside the campaign, fueled by repeated defeats, financial difficulties, inconclusive results on Super Tuesday and Saturday’s coast-to-coast trouncing, Doyle told the staff Sunday that she will step aside.
“Patti Solis Doyle has done an extraordinary job in getting us to this point – within reach of the nomination – and I am enormously grateful for her friendship and her outstanding work,” Clinton said in a statement.
Clinton, facing a series of difficult races the rest of this month, is looking to gain any advantage to slow her rival’s momentum until the campaign reaches what her aides believe will be friendlier territory in Ohio and Texas on March 4.
On Thursday, she made an unannounced trip to Chapel Hill, N.C., to seek an endorsement from former Sen. John Edwards, who gave up his presidential bid last month. Obama is scheduled to meet with Edwards on a similar mission tonight. Sunday’s move by Clinton came after a week in which she revealed that she had loaned her cash-strapped campaign $5 million last month.
The removal of Doyle, 42, was portrayed as an amicable one initiated by the campaign manager herself. But it gave credence to what some supporters have said for many weeks – that the campaign had spent too much money yielding too little results and that fresh management and advice are needed for what could be a long battle against Obama. Doyle did not tell Clinton how rapidly the campaign was burning through money, according to one campaign official, who said Clinton learned about her financial constraints only after the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 8.