Officials say Fla., Mich. delegates will get half-votes
May 31, 2008
NEDRA PICKLER and BETH FOUHY, Associated Press
- Democratic party officials said a committee agreed Saturday on a compromise to seat Michigan and Florida delegates with half-votes after Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton failed to get enough support to force their positions through.
Clinton’s chief delegate hunter Harold Ickes angrily informed the committee that Clinton had instructed him to reserve her right to appeal the matter to the Democrats’ credentials committee, which could potentially drag the matter to the party’s convention in August.
“There’s been a lot of talk about party unity - let’s all come together, and put our arms around each other,” said Ickes, who is also a member of the Rules Committee that approved the deal. “I submit to you ladies and gentlemen, hijacking four delegates … is not a good way to start down the path of party unity.”
The deal was reached after committee members met privately for more than three hours, trying to hammer out a deal, and announced in a raucous hearing that reflected deep divisions within the party. The sticking point was Michigan, where Obama’s name was not on the ballot.
Clinton’s camp insisted Obama shouldn’t get any pledged delegates in Michigan since he chose not to put his name on the ballot, and she should get 73 pledged delegates with 55 uncommitted. Obama’s team insisted the only fair solution was to split the pledged delegates in half between the two campaigns, with 64 each.
The committee agreed on a compromise offered by the Michigan Democratic Party that would split the difference, allowing Clinton to take 69 delegates and Obama 59. Each delegate would get half a vote at the convention in Denver this summer, according to the deal.
They also agreed to seat the Florida delegation based on the outcome of the January primary, with 105 pledged delegates for Clinton and 67 for Obama, but with each delegate getting half a vote as a penalty.
The resolution increased the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination to 2,118, leaving Obama 66 delegates short but still within striking distance after the three final primaries are held in the next three days.
Proponents of full seating continuously interrupted the committee members as they explained their support of the compromise, then supporters of the deal shouted back.
“Shut up!” one woman shouted at another.
“You shut up!” the second woman shouted back.
Jim Roosevelt, co-chair of the committee, tried repeatedly to gavel it to order. “You are dishonoring your candidate when you disrupt the speakers,” he chided.
Obama picked up a total of 32 delegates in Michigan, including superdelegates who have already committed, and 36 in Florida. Clinton picked up 38 in Michigan, including superdelegates, and 56.5 in Florida.
Obama’s total increased to 2,052, and Clinton had 1,877.5.
A proposal favored by Clinton that would have fully seated the Florida delegation fully in accordance with the January primary went down with 12 votes in support and 15 against.
Tina Fluornoy, who led Clinton’s efforts to seat both states’ delegations with full voting power, said she was disappointed by the outcome but knew the Clinton position had “no chance” of passing the committee.
“I understand the rules. … I can tell you one thing that has driven these rules was being a party of inclusion,” Fluornoy said. “I wish my colleagues will vote differently.”
The committee unanimously approved a measure supported by the Obama campaign that sat the delegates according to Clinton’s winning vote in the Florida contest, but penalized the delegation by allowing each only half a vote.
“We just blew the election!” a woman in the audience shouted. The crowd was divided between cheering Obama supporters and booing Clinton supporters.
“This isn’t unity! Count all the votes!” another audience member yelled.
Alice Huffman, a Clinton supporter on the committee, explained that the compromise was the next best thing to full seating.
“We will leave here more united than we came,” she said.
Some audience members heckled her in response. “Lipstick on a pig!” one shouted.
Obama resigns church membership
May 31, 2008
Staff Writer,BlackPoliticsontheWeb.com
- According to Chicago blogger, Monroe Anderson, Sen. Barack Obama sent a letter to Trinity United Church of Christ yesterday resigning his membership. His resignation comes on the heels of a controversial video clip of Father Michael Pfleger speaking in a guest appearance at Trinity.
Different State Of Race Relations: With Few Blacks, Utah Feels Its Way
May 31, 2008
Karl Vick, Washington Post
- Earlier this year, a state senator stood on the statehouse floor here and spoke disparagingly of a pending bill. “This baby is black,” said Sen. Chris Buttars, a Republican, adding, “It’s a dark, ugly thing.”
Weary of talking about race? Come to the Beehive State, where race relations is a topic of bracing freshness.
Here, basic issues of sensitivity — what is spoken of aloud and what is best left unsaid, assumptions good and bad, all the delicate matters that in so many parts of the country have been burnished to exquisite subtleties by worry and constant attention — are still very basic indeed.
A new beginning: Blacks giving the Mormon Church a second look
May 31, 2008
JOHN DORMAN, Columbia News Service
- Angela Carson used to jump up and frequently yell “Hallelujah!” in church. Now, she sits in the middle pew and sings quietly, with a softer, gentler demeanor.
Carson, a 28-year-old black woman, left her Baptist church in New York last year feeling uninspired and removed from the congregation. She visited many traditional black churches, but she found her new home with the Harlem branch of the Mormon church.
The religious pillars of service and community outreach appealed to Carson, but so did something that may surprise many blacks: the commitment to diversity she saw at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Democratic panel considers delegate plans
May 31, 2008
NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press
- The fate of nearly 2.3 million Democratic presidential primary votes belongs to 30 party activists.
They serve on the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee, which planned to decide Saturday what role Michigan and Florida should play at the national convention in August.
The states were banned from sending delegates because they held primaries in January, too early under party rules. They made the move in an effort to have greater influence on a nominating process long dominated by Iowa and New Hampshire.
Democrats now want to figure a way to include the two states in the convention because they will be critical in the general election.
But how many delegates should each state get and how should they be distributed between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton? That was the vexing question for the committee.
Clinton supporters planned a protest to demand full seating of the 368 delegates from the two states. That outcome was unlikely because committee members are interested in punishing the two states to discourage future line jumpers.
Shortly before the meeting began at a hotel three miles north of the White House, about 500 people had gathered on a sidewalk and cheered loudly as cars turned into the driveway. They waved homemade signs, blew horns and chanted “Every vote!”
Police cordoned off the sidewalk with yellow tape and officers and hotel security kept watch. Tour buses pulled up periodically to drop off protesters.
Sharon Clark of Orlando, Fla., came with a group that had driven from Florida. They wore black T-shirts that said, “This is a Democracy, Be a Democrat.” Clark, 41, voted for Obama in the primary. Even though seating the state’s delegates probably would help Clinton, she believed Florida’s vote should count especially given the state’s spotty history on voting.
“I’m tired of it. I want to go and vote and know my vote is going to count,” she said.
Beverly Battelle Weeks, 56, a Clinton delegate, got up before 4 a.m. Saturday to drive from Richmond, Va. She carried a black umbrella on which she had pasted letters spelling out “Count All Votes.”
“The right thing to do is to seat all the delegates. Anything less is not democratic,” she said.
Clinton won both Florida and Michigan after all the candidates agreed not to campaign in either state. At the time, she said the vote did not matter. Now, however, she trails Obama and wants to see her victories result in more delegates at the convention.
“It’s important to send the right signals to them and the people living in those states that we Democrats value those states, value those voters and want them as full partners in a general election in assembling 270 electoral votes,” said Clinton strategist Harold Ickes, a member of the rules committee.
Obama could afford to allow Clinton a few delegates — going into the meeting, he was just 42 away from the nomination out of more than 2,000 required. Clinton was more than 200 delegates behind.
The committee appeared to be leaning toward a compromise that would allow each state to restore half of its delegate count. That probably would add fewer than 30 more delegates to the total that Obama needs, with three more contests to go — Puerto Rico on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday.
Members of the committee discussed their options over a lengthy dinner with DNC Chairman Howard Dean that began Friday night and lasted until 2 a.m. Saturday. People who attended said no deals were reached, although there was a widespread sentiment that they should try to come up with some resolution that would put the issue behind them.
Obama campaign officials, eager to move on, said they were willing to give Clinton the edge in delegates, but they were not willing to accept the Clinton camp’s hard-line stance that all the delegates should be fully seated in accordance to the January elections.
“We have both fought hard throughout the country, both of us, for delegates and the fact that we’re willing to essentially cede her delegates we do not think is an insignificant gesture on our part,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said. “But we’re willing to do this in the interest of trying to bring this to a close so we can focus on the general election.”
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