Jun
6
Clinton to end campaign Saturday at noon
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WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton will end her presidential campaign Saturday at an event in Washington.
She will thank supporters and formally endorse rival Barack Obama, who clinched the nomination on Tuesday.
The campaign said in a statement Friday that the event will take place at noon at the National Building Museum.
The former first lady is expected to urge Democrats to unite behind Obama and help him defeat Republican John McCain in November.
Clinton and Obama met privately at the home of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein Thursday night to discuss the campaign going forward.
Jun
3
WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton told colleagues Tuesday she would consider joining Barack Obama as his running mate, and advisers said she was withholding a formal departure from the race partly to use her remaining leverage to press for a spot on the ticket.
On a conference call with other New York lawmakers, Clinton, a New York senator, said she was willing to become Obama’s vice presidential nominee if it would help Democrats win the White House, according to several participants in the call.
Clinton’s remarks came in response to a question from Democratic Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who said she believed the best way for Obama to win key voting blocs, including Hispanics, would be for him to choose Clinton as his running mate.
“I am open to it,” Clinton replied, if it would help the party’s prospects in November. Her direct quote was described by two lawmakers who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for Clinton.
Clinton also told colleagues the delegate math was not there for her to overtake Obama, but that she wanted to take time to determine how to leave the race in a way that would best help Democrats.
“I deserve some time to get this right,” she said, even as the other lawmakers forcefully argued for her to press Obama to choose her as his running mate.
Joseph Crowley, a Queens Democrat who participated in the call, said her answer “left open the possibility that she would do anything that she can to contribute toward a Democratic victory in November. There was no hedging on that. Whatever she can do to contribute, she was willing to do.”
Another person on the call, Rep. Jose Serrano of New York City, said her answer was “just what I was hoping to hear. … Of course she was interested in being president, but she’s just as interested in making sure Democrats get elected in November.”
Rep. Charles Rangel, a devoted booster of Clinton who helped pave the way for her successful Senate campaign, said he spoke to her Tuesday and got much the same answer.
“She’s run a great campaign and even though she’ll be a great senator, she has a lot of followers that obviously Obama doesn’t have, and clearly the numbers are against her and so I think they bring all parts of the Democratic Party together and then some,” Rangel said.
Aides to the Illinois senator said he and Clinton had not spoken about the prospects of her joining the ticket.
Obama effectively sewed up the 2,118 delegates needed to win the nomination Tuesday, based on a tally of pledged delegates, superdelegates who have declared their preference, and another 18 superdelegates who have confirmed their intentions to The Associated Press. It also included five delegates Obama was guaranteed as long as he gained 15 percent of the vote in South Dakota and Montana later in the day.
Word of Clinton’s vice presidential musings came as she prepared to deliver a televised address to supporters on the final night of the epic primary season. She was working out final details of the speech at her Chappaqua, N.Y., home with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, their daughter Chelsea, and close aides.
Earlier, on NBC’s “Today Show,” Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said that once Obama gets the majority of convention delegates, “I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him and call him the nominee.”
Clinton will pledge to continue to speak out on issues like health care. But for all intents and purposes, two senior officials said, her campaign is over.
Most campaign staff will be let go and will be paid through June 15, said the officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to divulge her plans.
The advisers said Clinton has made a strategic decision to not formally end her campaign, giving her leverage to negotiate with Obama on various matters including a possible vice presidential nomination for her. She also wants to press him on issues he should focus on in the fall, such as health care.
Universal health care, Clinton’s signature issue as first lady in the 1990s, was a point of dispute between Obama and the New York senator during their epic nomination fight.
Other names have been floated as possible running mates for Obama, including New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, and governors including Janet Napolitano of Arizona, Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas and Tim Kaine of Virginia. Also mentioned are foreign policy experts including former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, and other senators such as Missouri’s Claire McCaskill and Virginia’s Jim Webb.
Obama could also look outside the party to people such as anti-war Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska or independent New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Or he could look to one of his prominent supporters such as former Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota or try to bring on a Clinton supporter, such as Indiana’s Sen. Evan Bayh or retired Gen. Wesley Clark
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Jun
2
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Former president Bill Clinton dropped a hint Monday that the end might be nigh for his wife Hillary’s dogged campaign for the Democratic White House nomination, according to reports.
“I want to say also that this may be the last day I’m ever involved in a campaign of this kind,” the former president told Clinton supporters in South Dakota, ABC and NBC reported on their news websites.
“I thought I was out of politics, till Hillary decided to run. But it has been one of the greatest honors of my life to go around and campaign for her for president,” he added at the start of his stump speech.
Other reports suggested that in the face of her rival Barack Obama’s overwhelming lead, the New York senator is taking stock of whether to fight on beyond Tuesday’s final primaries.
The former first lady’s campaign announced that she would hold an election night “celebration” in her home state of New York, not in the final voting states of Montana or South Dakota.
The Politico website reported that far-flung members of Clinton’s travelling staff had been summoned back to New York for Tuesday evening and told their roles on the campaign are ending.
“The move is a sign that the campaign is beginning to shed — at least — some of its staff,” the report said.
According to New York newspaper Newsday, Clinton is to huddle with advisers and her husband at her home in Chappaqua to monitor the final results and decide whether and how to end her campaign.
“The only real counsel to Hillary is Bill; it’s not a wide circle, so we’re not sure what they’ll do,” Newsday quoted one of Clinton’s top supporters in New York as saying.
Senior Clinton advisor Harold Ickes said her camp was still making a case to “superdelegates,” the top party officials who have a free vote at August’s nominating convention, that she was the best potential president.
“We do not believe that by midnight tomorrow that either candidate will have the new magic number,” he told MSNBC.
“We’re continuing to press Hillary Clinton’s case to the uncommitted,” he said, shrugging off Bill Clinton’s reported remarks.
Obama’s campaign says he needs 43 more delegates to reach the nomination winning line of 2,118. The number was raised following a compromise reached Saturday on the status of renegade primaries in Michigan and Florida
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May
31
Seat all delegates, Clinton lawyer urges
Filed Under CNN News, Most Pepular, News, Top Stories | Leave a Comment
(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
May
30
Priest apologizes for mocking Clinton while at Obama church
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(CNN) — Sen. Barack Obama said he was “deeply disappointed” by a sermon at his church this week that mocked Sen. Hillary Clinton.
The Rev. Michael Pfleger, left, marches with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and others last year in Barrington, Illinois.
A video making the rounds on YouTube shows the Rev. Michael Pfleger mocking Clinton for becoming teary-eyed before the New Hampshire primary in January.
In the video, Pfleger wipes his eyes with a handkerchief and suggests Clinton wept because she thought that as a white person and the wife of a former president, she was entitled to the presidency.
“And then, out of nowhere, came ‘Hey, I’m Barack Obama,’ ” Pfleger said during a sermon Sunday at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois. “And [Clinton] said, ‘Oh damn, where did you come from? I’m white! I’m entitled! There’s a black man stealing my show!’ ” Watch Pfleger mock Clinton »
The video shows the congregation laughing and cheering.
Pfleger is a Catholic priest at St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church on Chicago’s southwest side.
He is also a friend of Trinity’s former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, from whom Obama distanced himself in April.
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At the time, Obama said he was “outraged” by Wright’s remarks suggesting the U.S. government might be responsible for the spread of AIDS in the black community and equating some American wartime efforts with terrorism.
Obama has known Pfleger for more than 20 years.
His campaign condemned Pfleger’s comments.
“As I have traveled this country, I’ve been impressed not by what divides us, but by all that that unites us,” Obama said in a statement Thursday.
“That is why I am deeply disappointed in Father Pfleger’s divisive, backward-looking rhetoric, which doesn’t reflect the country I see or the desire of people across America to come together in common cause.”
The Clinton camp also condemned Pfleger’s remarks.
“Divisive and hateful language like that is totally counterproductive in our efforts to bring our party together and have no place at the pulpit or in our politics,” the Clinton campaign said.
“We are disappointed that Sen. Obama didn’t specifically reject Father’s Pfleger’s despicable comments about Sen. Clinton and assume he will.”
Pfleger apologized for his comments Thursday evening.
“I regret the words I chose on Sunday,” he said in a statement. “These words are inconsistent with Sen. Obama’s life and message, and I am deeply sorry if they offended Sen. Clinton or anyone else who saw them.”
May
30
WASHINGTON - Unlike Hillary Rodham Clinton, rival Barack Obama planned for the long haul. Clinton hinged her whole campaign on an early knockout blow on Super Tuesday, while Obama’s staff researched congressional districts in states with primaries that were months away. What they found were opportunities to win delegates, even in states they would eventually lose.ADVERTISEMENT
Obama’s campaign mastered some of the most arcane rules in politics, and then used them to foil a front-runner who seemed to have every advantage - money, fame and a husband who had essentially run the Democratic Party for eight years as president.
“Without a doubt, their understanding of the nominating process was one of the keys to their success,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist not aligned with either candidate. “They understood the nuances of it and approached it at a strategic level that the Clinton campaign did not.”
Careful planning is one reason why Obama is emerging as the nominee as the Democratic Party prepares for its final three primaries, Puerto Rico on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday. Attributing his success only to soaring speeches and prodigious fundraising ignores a critical part of contest.
Obama used the Democrats’ system of awarding delegates to limit his losses in states won by Clinton while maximizing gains in states he carried. Clinton, meanwhile, conserved her resources by essentially conceding states that favored Obama, including many states that held caucuses instead of primaries.
In a stark example, Obama’s victory in Kansas wiped out the gains made by Clinton for winning New Jersey, even though New Jersey had three times as many delegates at stake. Obama did it by winning big in Kansas while keeping the vote relatively close in New Jersey.
The research effort was headed by Jeffrey Berman, Obama’s press-shy national director of delegate operations. Berman, who also tracked delegates in former Rep. Dick Gephardt’s presidential bids, spent the better part of 2007 analyzing delegate opportunities for Obama.
Obama won a majority of the 23 Super Tuesday contests on Feb. 5 and then spent the following two weeks racking up 11 straight victories, building an insurmountable lead among delegates won in primaries and caucuses.
What made it especially hard for Clinton to catch up was that Obama understood and took advantage of a nominating system that emerged from the 1970s and ’80s, when the party struggled to find a balance between party insiders and its rank-and-file voters.
Until the 1970s, the nominating process was controlled by party leaders, with ordinary citizens having little say. There were primaries and caucuses, but the delegates were often chosen behind closed doors, sometimes a full year before the national convention. That culminated in a 1968 national convention that didn’t reflect the diversity of the party - racially or ideologically.
The fiasco of the 1968 convention in Chicago, where police battled anti-war protesters in the streets, led to calls for a more inclusive process.
One big change was awarding delegates proportionally, meaning you can finish second or third in a primary and still win delegates to the party’s national convention. As long candidates get at least 15 percent of the vote, they are eligible for delegates.
The system enables strong second-place candidates to stay competitive and extend the race - as long as they don’t run out of campaign money.
“For people who want a campaign to end quickly, proportional allocation is a bad system,” Devine said. “For people who want a system that is fair and reflective of the voters, it’s a much better system.”
Another big change was the introduction of superdelegates, the party and elected officials who automatically attend the convention and can vote for whomever they choose regardless of what happens in the primaries and caucuses.
Much has been made of the superdelegates this year because neither Obama nor Clinton can reach the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination without their support.
A more subtle change was the distribution of delegates within each state. As part of the proportional system, Democrats award delegates based on statewide vote totals as well as results in individual congressional districts. The delegates, however, are not distributed evenly within a state, like they are in the Republican system.
Under Democratic rules, congressional districts with a history of strong support for Democratic candidates are rewarded with more delegates than districts that are more Republican. Some districts packed with Democratic voters can have as many as eight or nine delegates up for grabs, while more Republican districts in the same state have three or four.
The system is designed to benefit candidates who do well among loyal Democratic constituencies, and none is more loyal than black voters. Obama, who would be the first black candidate nominated by a major political party, has been winning 80 percent to 90 percent of the black vote in most primaries, according to exit polls.
“Black districts always have a large number of delegates because they are the highest performers for the Democratic Party,” said Elaine Kamarck, a Harvard University professor who is writing a book about the Democratic nominating process.
“Once you had a black candidate you knew that he would be winning large numbers of delegates because of this phenomenon,” said Kamarck, who is also a superdelegate supporting Clinton.
In states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, Clinton won the statewide vote but Obama won enough delegates to limit her gains. In states Obama carried, like Georgia and Virginia, he maximized the number of delegates he won.
“The Obama campaign was very good at targeting districts in areas where they could do well,” said former DNC Chairman Don Fowler, a Clinton superdelegate from South Carolina. “They were very conscious and aware of these nuances.”
But, Fowler noted, the best strategy in the world would have been useless without the right candidate.
“If that same strategy and that same effort had been used with a different candidate, a less charismatic candidate, a less attractive candidate, it wouldn’t have worked,” Fowler said. “The reason they look so good is because Obama was so good.”
May
21
Obama, Clinton supporters both say Clinton attacking unfairly
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From CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney
Clinton and Obama supporters both said Clinton attacked unfairly.
(CNN) - Even in a state Hillary Clinton appears to have won by 35 points, a majority of Kentucky voters say the New York senator attacked Barack Obama unfairly.
According to the exit polls, 54 percent of voters said Clinton launched unfair attacks on Obama, though that didn’t seem to deter voters there from supporting Clinton - 55 percent of those who said Clinton attacked unfairly still voted for the New York senator.
Clinton faced a similar statistic in West Virginia last week. There she won by 41 points, but nearly 60 percent of voters said she made unfair attacks against the Illinois senator.
Filed under: Exit Polls
May
8
Analysis: Democrats quietly send word to Clinton it’s over
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WASHINGTON - Apart from George McGovern, a plainspoken man who knows something about losing elections, not a single Democrat of national stature publicly urged Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday to end her campaign for the White House.
They didn’t have to.
There was no shortage of other ways to signal, suggest, insinuate or instigate the same thing. And certainly no need to apply unseemly pressure to a historic political figure, a woman who has run a grueling race, won millions of votes and drawn uncounted numbers of new Democratic voters to the polls.
Instead, many Democrats preferred to say softly what the party’s 1972 presidential nominee said for all to hear. Barack Obama has won the nomination “by any practical test,” McGovern said.
“Hillary, of course, will make the decision as to if and when she ends her campaign,” he added. “But I hope that she reaches that decision soon so that we can concentrate on a unified party capable of winning the White House next November.”
Its campaign quarry finally cornered, the Obama high command gave it space. The Illinois senator was on track to become the first black presidential nominee of a major party and aides produced a small trickle of superdelegate supporters. But there was nary a word about hastening Clinton’s departure.
“I think that it would be inappropriate and awkward and wrong for any of us to tell Senator Clinton when it is time for the race to be over,” said Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, speaking on a campaign-sponsored conference call with reporters.
“This is her decision and it is only her decision. And we are confident that she is going to do the right thing for the Democratic nominee. We are confident she will help work hard to unite our party.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer, a staunch supporter of his fellow New Yorker, said, “It’s her decision to make and I’ll accept what decision she makes.” Asked about her chances of still capturing the Democratic nomination, the normally loquacious Schumer fell silent.
Other Democrats preferred to speak more freely, but only on condition of anonymity. They, too, said that Tuesday’s primaries in North Carolina and Indiana had effectively sealed the outcome.
They predicted an acceleration in the pace of superdelegates to his side - he gained four during the day, to two for Clinton. And wondered about her ability to raise sufficient campaign funds - she disclosed having loaned herself another $6.4 million in recent weeks, despite an earlier boast that 80,000 new donors came to her aid after she won the Pennsylvania primary on April 22.
Clinton’s arguments for staying in the race were disappearing.
Obama lengthened his overall lead in delegates in the two states that held primaries on Tuesday, and by day’s end, had drawn to within about a dozen of the former first lady in superdelegate support. He had 1,846.5 in The Associated Press’ count, to 1,696 for Clinton, out of 2,025 needed for the nomination.
Additionally, his 240,000-vote victory in North Carolina, coupled with her narrow, 18,000-vote triumph in Indiana, all but assured Obama will finish the primary season with a lead in the cumulative popular vote.
Five more states and Puerto Rico are yet to vote. But alone among them, Oregon figures prominently in any Democratic plan to amass 270 electoral votes in the fall, the number required to win the White House. Her persistent attempt to claim the unprovable, that she would more easily win in the fall than Obama, faded for reasons beyond her control.
For members of Congress, in this case Democrats, electability begins and sometimes even ends at home.
Which is why it did not pass unnoticed last weekend - with Obama trying to fend off controversy stemming from his former pastor - that a sustained conservative attempt to derail a Democratic House candidate in Louisiana by linking him to the presidential contender had fizzled.
Democrat Don Cazayoux is “with Barack Obama for a big government scheme” for health insurance, said a television advertisement run by Freedom’s Watch. “Their plan raises income taxes and raises taxes on small business.”
Cazayoux won anyway, and now holds a House seat in the Baton Rouge area that had been in Republican hands for three decades.
A separate ad, aired by the North Carolina Republican Party, showed Obama and his former preacher, as well as a brief video of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. “He’s just too extreme for North Carolina,” the narrator says in the 30-second spot.
Because the commercial was aimed at both the Democrats in the state gubernatorial primary, its impact was unclear.
Clinton vowed to press on, planting her flag in West Virginia, site of next week’s contest, and announcing plans to visit other upcoming primary states on Thursday. She said controversies over the delegations from Michigan and Florida must be resolved.
“I’m staying in this race until there’s a nominee and obviously I am going to work as hard as I can to become that nominee,” she said.
That sounded fine to Rep. Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania, an uncommitted superdelegate.
“I think most of us out of respect for her are content to wait a little longer,” he said.
May
3
HAGATNA, Guam - Barack Obama defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton by seven votes in the Guam Democratic presidential caucuses Saturday. The count of more than 4,500 ballots took all night.
Neither candidate campaigned in the U.S. island territory in person, but both did long-distance media interviews and bought campaign ads for the caucuses.
Results of the count completed Sunday morning Guam time show delegates pledged to Obama with 2,264 votes to 2,257 for Clinton’s slate. That means they’ll split the pledged delegate votes. Obama’s slate won in 14 of 21 districts.
Eight pledged delegates will attend the convention, each with one-half vote.
U.S. citizens on the island, however, have no vote in the November election.
The territory also sends five superdelegates to the National Convention in August in Denver.
Voters picked two of the superdelegates, electing uncommitted Pilar Lujan party chairman and Jaime Paulina vice chairman. Paulina ran as an Obama supporter. One other existing superdelegate has favored Clinton and the votes of the other two have not been declared.
All-day voting Saturday had people lining up at 21 caucus sites around the U.S. territorial island, which has unexpected importance in a historic Democratic race in which every delegate matters.
There was no direct presidential vote, but each candidate had a slate of supporters on the ballot.
Slow ballot-by-ballot counting went through the night in the territorial legislative building after votes were hand-carried from the caucus sites.
Presidential caucuses on Guam usually pass without much notice from the candidates. This time, Obama and Clinton made their case for the territory’s four regular delegates with local advertising and long-distance interviews.
Lines formed early at some caucus sites.
Cynthia Estrada of Dededo said she was making up her mind while waiting to vote, but she was leaning toward Clinton.
“She’s had the experience,” she said. “She’s got her husband to help her.”
Yona resident Tommy Shimizu said he was voting for Obama delegates.
“It’s the fact that he grew up in Hawaii, and I think he can make change,” he said. “I think it’s time for that.”
Clinton and Obama pitched improved health care and economic opportunity as they courted Guam voters from across the international date line. Both Clinton and Obama say they’ve got the better health plan for Guamanians.
Obama said in an interview with Pacific Daily News that he would support reexamination of a $5.4 million Medicaid spending limit imposed on the territory. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, told KUAM radio that his wife would work to remove the cap.
Hillary Clinton also has called for Guamanians to be able to vote in presidential elections
May
1
SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Hillary Rodham Clinton was jolted Thursday by the defection of one of her longtime superdelegate supporters, a former national party chairman who urged fellow Democrats to “reject the old negative politics” and unify behind Barack Obama.
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“A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to continue” a long, self-destructive Democratic campaign, Joe Andrew added in a letter designed to have an impact on the turbulent race nationally as well as in his home state of Indiana, site of a primary next week.
“A vote to continue this process is a vote that assists John McCain,” Andrew wrote.
In response, Clinton told ABC’s “Nightline”: “I think this has been good for the Democratic Party. … People can decide however they want to decide. That’s up to them. But anyone who believes this is bad for the party I just think is not paying attention, because the level of enthusiasm to be part of this process is, from my perspective, helping us build a stronger and deeper Democratic base.”
Andrew’s defection came at a particularly opportune time for Obama. The front-runner in the race, he has won more states than his rival as well as more of the popular vote, and he has an overall lead in delegates, 1736.5-1602.5. It takes 2,025 to clinch the nomination.
But he has struggled in recent days to limit the political damage caused by controversial comments by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
Clinton’s hopes of stalling Obama’s drive to the nomination rest on a strong showing in the remaining primaries, beginning Tuesday in Indiana. At the same time, she hopes to persuade superdelegates that she would be a stronger candidate for the party this fall against McCain and the Republicans.
A top aide to the former first lady, Harold Ickes, sent a memo to superdelegates during the day making the case. Among the polls cited was a recent Associated Press-Ipsos survey that found Clinton leading McCain by 9 percentage points, while Obama was virtually tied with the Republican.
Andrew was one of five superdelegates to swing behind Obama during the day, compared to four Clinton netted. The result was to trim the former first lady’s once-imposing advantage among party luminaries who will attend the convention to 268-248.
In his letter, Andrew not only challenged Clinton’s claims about electability, but he also bluntly denounced the type of campaign tactics practiced by some in the Clinton circle.
“If the campaign’s surrogates called Governor Bill Richardson, a respected former member of President Clinton’s cabinet, a “Judas” for endorsing Senator Obama, we can all imagine how they will treat somebody like me,” he wrote.
“They are the best practitioners of the old politics, so they will no doubt call me a traitor, an opportunist and a hypocrite. I will be branded as disloyal, power-hungry, but most importantly, they will use the exact words that Republicans used to attack me when I was defending President Clinton.”
Andrew was far gentler on Clinton and her husband, both of whom he praised. But at one point, he wrote: “In an accident of timing, Indiana has been given the opportunity to truly make a difference. Hoosiers should grab that power and do what in their heart they know is right. They should reject the old negative politics and vote for true change.”
Andrew made his move on a day in which Obama and Clinton campaigned across Indiana, where 72 convention delegates will be at stake. Polls point toward a close race in a state that even some of Clinton’s supporters concede is critical to her campaign.
Clinton was joined by her mother, Dorothy Rodham, and her daughter, Chelsea, in Brownsburg, where she proposed allowing the federal and state governments to fund paid family leave. Her plan calls for a $3,000 tax credit to an individual with substantial long-term care needs or their caregivers as well as a tax credit to cover 75 percent of long-term care insurance premiums. She also favors expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover workers at smaller firms.
Obama appeared before senior citizens as well as farm families on a day in which he continued to criticize Clinton and McCain for proposing a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax.
He said the average voter would save “a quarter and a nickel” a day, not enough to buy a cup of coffee at a convenience store, without making an appreciable impact on the nation’s energy problems.
North Carolina, with 115 delegates at stake, shares the primary date with Indiana. Obama has long held a lead in North Carolina, in part because black voters are expected to account for as much as one-third of the ballots cast.
But a poll released during the day reported Clinton has closed the gap to single digits, and her campaign launched a television ad that features Gov. Mike Easley.
Former President Bill Clinton was in West Virginia on his wife’s behalf. In Clarksburg, he called her a scrapper and contrasted her appeal among working-class voters with the elitists he said support Obama.
“The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it’s by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules,” he said. “In West Virginia and Arkansas, we know that when we see it.”
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