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Clinton: Count Fla., Mich., or hold new primaries |
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By Sam Youngman
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Posted: 03/12/08 11:36 AM [ET] |
After falling further behind in the delegate count Tuesday night, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) intensified her push Wednesday morning to seat delegates from Michigan and Florida.
The Clinton campaign has apparently decided that there are two options they would accept: “Either honor the results or hold new primary elections.”
The Clinton campaign sent a letter to rival Sen. Barack Obama’s (Ill.) campaign manager David Plouffe Wednesday, asking the Obama campaign “to join us in our efforts to ensure that these votes are counted.”
In addition, at a speech Wednesday morning at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington, Clinton said that Michigan and Florida primary voters “are in danger of being excluded from our democratic process and I think that’s wrong.”
Repeating her assertion that the votes should either be counted or new elections should be held, Clinton said: “I don’t see any other solutions that are fair and honor the commitment that 2 and a half million voters made in the Democratic primaries in those two states.”
In the letter to Plouffe, Clinton campaign manager Maggie Williams said the campaign is “in active consultation with all of our supporters in Florida, including members of Congress.”
“In Michigan, we are in active consultation with the committee appointed by Gov. [Jennifer] Granholm,” Williams wrote.
For its part, the Obama campaign noted in a memo Wednesday morning that the Illinois senator’s wins in Mississippi Tuesday night and Wyoming last Saturday have effectively erased whatever delegates Clinton won back with her victories in Texas and Ohio last week.
The Obama campaign said Clinton continues to face a nearly impossible mathematical challenge, and she is grasping at straws in her search for delegates.
“Throughout this entire process, they have cherry-picked states, diminished caucuses, and moved the goalposts to create a shifting, twisted rationale for why they should win the nomination despite winning fewer primaries, fewer states, fewer delegates and fewer votes,” Plouffe wrote in the memo.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) stripped Michigan and Florida of their delegates for violating the committee’s rules on when states could hold primaries.
The Democratic candidates all agreed not to campaign in any state that violated the DNC rules, but Clinton still pulled off wins in both Michigan and Florida.
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