May
31
Seat all delegates, Clinton lawyer urges
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(CNN) – A day before a Democratic panel is to determine how to seat the delegations of Florida and Michigan, the Clinton campaign’s chief lawyer said the committee is compelled to seat both delegations fully and not award Sen. Barack Obama any delegates from Michigan.
Sen. Hillary Clinton’s lawyer is set to make her case before a DNC panel Saturday.
In a letter addressed to the co-chairs of the Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws panel, Clinton lawyer Lyn Utrecht said Friday that both states have already been sufficiently punished because of lack of campaign activity.
The states broke ranks to hold primaries earlier than party rules allowed. As punishment, both state parties were barred from representation when the party nominates a candidate at the August convention.
The states are challenging those sanctions, with encouragement from the Clinton campaign.
Clinton won decisively in both states after all candidates had agreed not to campaign in either state. Obama and some other candidates had their names taken off the Michigan ballot, but he was on Florida’s ballot.
“It is a bedrock principle of our party that every vote must be counted, and thereby every elected delegate should be seated,” Utrecht wrote.
“The states have already been punished because no campaign activity was conducted in Florida or Michigan. There is no requirement or need to punish their duly elected delegates who represent the 2.3 million voters in Michigan and Florida who participated in the nominating process.” Read the full letter (pdf)
Utrecht also made clear that the campaign will not accept a resolution in Michigan that awards Obama any delegates, because the Illinois senator took his name off the ballot there. Read more about the members of the DNC committee
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Obama campaign manager David Plouffe told The Associated Press that receiving no pledged delegates from Michigan is not acceptable and “I don’t think is a position that people find terribly reasonable.”
Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod said his campaign wants “a resolution that allows Florida and Michigan to come to the convention, participate in the convention and do it within the rules of the party.”
But Axelrod took issue with the Clinton campaign’s approach to the issue.
“Everybody agreed that these contests would not be valid,” he said, adding that Clinton reconsidered “when the race began to turn and her situation changed.”
Florida Democrats voted 50 percent for Clinton and 33 percent for Obama. In Michigan, Clinton got 55 percent of the vote, and 40 percent of Democrats voted for an uncommitted slate.
“Some would take the position that perhaps they were, their intention was to vote for Sen. Obama … some would take the position that you can’t know what the intentions of those voters were,” DNC Communications Director Karen Finney said Thursday.
Right now, with no Michigan or Florida delegates included, Obama leads Clinton by 199 delegates. He needs 45 more to clinch the nomination.
“Neither the DNC Rules nor the Michigan Delegate Selection Plan allow arbitrary reallocation of uncommitted delegates to a candidate or arbitrary reallocation of delegates from one candidate to another,” Utrecht wrote.
The Clinton campaign also said Friday that former Michigan Gov. Jim Blanchard and Florida state Sen. Arthenia Joyner will make the case for the campaign Saturday.
At the hearing, the Democratic Party has to make two big choices. The first is how many delegates from Florida and Michigan to seat. Right now, the number of delegates is zero because of the party’s punishment.
CNN.com/Live will stream live coverage of the meeting from start to finish on Saturday.
Once the committee decides how many delegates to seat, it has to make a second decision. View a timeline of the Democratic delegate dispute »
“If you then agree to seat delegates, how do you then apportion those delegates to the candidates?” Finney asked.
There’s another scenario Clinton would probably prefer: All the Florida and Michigan delegates are seated, and Obama is given no uncommitted Michigan delegates.
As a result, Obama would be 81 delegates ahead, and he would need 155 more to win.
But there’s a scenario that might be acceptable to Obama: Half the Michigan and Florida delegates are seated, and all the uncommitted Michigan delegates are given to him.
Then, Obama would be 167.5 delegates ahead and he would need 72.5 more to win.
Either way, Obama would be ahead in delegates.
While the debate over Michigan and Florida continues, the top two Democrats in Congress are coordinating an effort to get uncommitted superdelegates to publicly endorse a candidate and bring the Democratic presidential nomination fight to a conclusion.
A senior Democratic aide said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling uncommitted superdelegates and pressuring them to back either Obama or Clinton between now and next week. Pelosi is working with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
In an interview with a San Francisco radio station on Thursday, Reid said he spoke to Pelosi and DNC Chairman Howard Dean.
“We all are going to urge our folks next week to make a decision very quickly,” Reid said.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s in Puerto Rico this weekend campaigning before Sunday’s primary. Clinton holds a double-digit lead in Puerto Rico, a poll released Thursday suggests.
The weekend primary will probably be the New York senator’s last chance to boost her popular vote total, because Obama is widely viewed to have an advantage in the final two primaries Tuesday in South Dakota and Montana
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