Monday, March 31, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Barack Obama 2008: Wright Hasn't Affected Obama - Poll
Barack Obama 2008: Wright Hasn't Affected Obama - Poll: "Wright Hasn't Affected Obama - Poll"
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Friday, March 21, 2008
Close Polls for Obama and Clinton
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Democrat Barack Obama suffered in the polls Thursday after a much-acclaimed speech on race that, pundits said, had failed to defuse voters' anger over rage-filled sermons by his former pastor.
Waging an acrimonious battle against Hillary Clinton for the Democrats' White House nomination, Obama confessed to being bruised by the controversy surrounding his longtime Chicago preacher, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
"In some ways this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that, you know, the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates," the Illinois senator told CNN in an interview that aired late Wednesday.
"As a practical matter, in terms of how this plays out demographically, I can't tell you. And the speech I gave yesterday (Tuesday) obviously was not crafted to hit a particular demographic," he said.
Obama, the first African-American with a viable shot at the presidency, used his landmark address on race and politics to try to blunt the Wright controversy but also to elevate the debate to a higher plane.
On endless television replays of his sermons, Wright has been shown assailing US and Israeli "terrorism," calling on blacks to sing "God damn America," and alleging that AIDS in Africa was spread by the US government.
Many conservative commentators have fastened on Obama's refusal to disown Wright, whom the senator described as "like family," even as he condemned the pastor's incendiary sermons as "profoundly distorted."
A clutch of polls released since Tuesday pointed to an erosion of Obama's support, with white working-class voters and independents especially alienated. That could hurt him in the Democrats' next primary in Pennsylvania on April 22.
The latest Gallup daily tracking poll found Clinton pulling into a seven-point lead nationally over Obama, 49 percent to 42 percent. It was Clinton's first statistically significant lead over Obama in more than a month.
"The initial indications are that the speech has not halted Clinton's gaining momentum, as she led by a similar margin in Tuesday night's polling as compared to Monday night's polling," Gallup said.
The poll also found Republican nominee-elect John McCain benefiting from the Democratic brawling. The Arizona senator had an edge of 47 percent to 43 percent over Obama, and a lead of 48 percent to 45 over Clinton.
Another survey by Rasmussen gave Obama a favorable rating of 48 percent among voters. Just before the Wright videos emerged last week, Obama's rating was 52 percent.
CBS News poll numbers showed Obama still just ahead of Clinton among Democratic primary voters -- 46 percent to 43. But a month ago, his margin was far wider at 54 percent to 38.
"If the sort of figures we've been seeing in the past 48 hours persist, they will certainly play into the superdelegates' calculation," said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former White House advisor.
With Obama only just ahead of Clinton after 46 Democratic contests, the nomination is likely to hinge on nearly 800 party elders known as superdelegates, who are free to vote as conscience dictates.
In public, the Clinton campaign has kept its distance from Obama's pastor problems. But The New York Times reported Thursday that the row was grist for her aides' lobbying of superdelegates.
"Mrs. Clinton's advisers said they had spent recent days making the case to wavering superdelegates that Mr. Obama's association with Mr. Wright would doom their party in the general election," the newspaper said.
The Clinton campaign did not comment on that assertion, but her chief strategist Mark Penn seized on the shifting landscape suggested in the latest polls.
"The more that the voters learn about Barack Obama, the more his ability to beat John McCain is declining compared to Hillary," he said in a campaign memo.
Obama, on CNN, insisted that before the Democratic convention in August, "we're going to have won more states, we will have a higher portion of the popular vote," and be poised to become the standard-bearer against McCain.
Waging an acrimonious battle against Hillary Clinton for the Democrats' White House nomination, Obama confessed to being bruised by the controversy surrounding his longtime Chicago preacher, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
"In some ways this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that, you know, the odds of me getting elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates," the Illinois senator told CNN in an interview that aired late Wednesday.
"As a practical matter, in terms of how this plays out demographically, I can't tell you. And the speech I gave yesterday (Tuesday) obviously was not crafted to hit a particular demographic," he said.
Obama, the first African-American with a viable shot at the presidency, used his landmark address on race and politics to try to blunt the Wright controversy but also to elevate the debate to a higher plane.
On endless television replays of his sermons, Wright has been shown assailing US and Israeli "terrorism," calling on blacks to sing "God damn America," and alleging that AIDS in Africa was spread by the US government.
Many conservative commentators have fastened on Obama's refusal to disown Wright, whom the senator described as "like family," even as he condemned the pastor's incendiary sermons as "profoundly distorted."
A clutch of polls released since Tuesday pointed to an erosion of Obama's support, with white working-class voters and independents especially alienated. That could hurt him in the Democrats' next primary in Pennsylvania on April 22.
The latest Gallup daily tracking poll found Clinton pulling into a seven-point lead nationally over Obama, 49 percent to 42 percent. It was Clinton's first statistically significant lead over Obama in more than a month.
"The initial indications are that the speech has not halted Clinton's gaining momentum, as she led by a similar margin in Tuesday night's polling as compared to Monday night's polling," Gallup said.
The poll also found Republican nominee-elect John McCain benefiting from the Democratic brawling. The Arizona senator had an edge of 47 percent to 43 percent over Obama, and a lead of 48 percent to 45 over Clinton.
Another survey by Rasmussen gave Obama a favorable rating of 48 percent among voters. Just before the Wright videos emerged last week, Obama's rating was 52 percent.
CBS News poll numbers showed Obama still just ahead of Clinton among Democratic primary voters -- 46 percent to 43. But a month ago, his margin was far wider at 54 percent to 38.
"If the sort of figures we've been seeing in the past 48 hours persist, they will certainly play into the superdelegates' calculation," said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former White House advisor.
With Obama only just ahead of Clinton after 46 Democratic contests, the nomination is likely to hinge on nearly 800 party elders known as superdelegates, who are free to vote as conscience dictates.
In public, the Clinton campaign has kept its distance from Obama's pastor problems. But The New York Times reported Thursday that the row was grist for her aides' lobbying of superdelegates.
"Mrs. Clinton's advisers said they had spent recent days making the case to wavering superdelegates that Mr. Obama's association with Mr. Wright would doom their party in the general election," the newspaper said.
The Clinton campaign did not comment on that assertion, but her chief strategist Mark Penn seized on the shifting landscape suggested in the latest polls.
"The more that the voters learn about Barack Obama, the more his ability to beat John McCain is declining compared to Hillary," he said in a campaign memo.
Obama, on CNN, insisted that before the Democratic convention in August, "we're going to have won more states, we will have a higher portion of the popular vote," and be poised to become the standard-bearer against McCain.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Ferraro Comments Major Issue
From the New York Times
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and JULIE BOSMAN
PHILADELPHIA — The Democratic presidential contest was jolted Tuesday by accusations surrounding race and sex, set off by remarks from Geraldine A. Ferraro that Senator Barack Obama had received preferential treatment because he is a black man.
Ms. Ferraro, the former congresswoman and vice-presidential candidate who backs Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, told The Daily Breeze, a newspaper in Torrance, Calif.: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
She made the comments last week, but on Tuesday, the Obama camp latched on to them, calling them outrageous and demanding that Mrs. Clinton repudiate them.
In an interview on Tuesday night, Ms. Ferraro defended her comments and said she was furious with the Obama campaign, accusing it of twisting her words.
“Every time that campaign is upset about something, they call it racist,” she said. “I will not be discriminated against because I’m white. If they think they’re going to shut up Geraldine Ferraro with that kind of stuff, they don’t know me.”
Despite calls that Ms. Ferraro step down from the Clinton campaign, where she is a member of the finance committee, there was no indication on Tuesday that she would.
The Ferraro comments overshadowed an increasingly bitter dispute between the campaigns about the candidates’ qualifications to serve as commander in chief. On Tuesday, Greg Craig, a former official in the administration of President Bill Clinton, and now a vocal supporter of Mr. Obama, issued a blistering rebuttal to Mrs. Clinton’s assertions that she had been deeply involved in her husband’s foreign policy successes.
“She never managed a foreign policy crisis, and there is no evidence to suggest that she participated in the decision-making that occurred in connection with any such crisis,” Mr. Craig said. Referring to her “red phone” commercial, he said, “As far as the record shows, Senator Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national security issue — not at 3 a.m. or at any other time of day.”
The Clinton campaign said that Mr. Craig’s memorandum was baseless and that the Obama campaign had been unable to make a positive case for Mr. Obama’s experience.
Mr. Obama and the Clintons campaigned Tuesday in Pennsylvania, opening up a new front in the long-running and increasingly bitter contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. The state does not vote until April 22, and there are no contests before then, leaving the candidates six full weeks to try to make news here while their surrogates proceed to eviscerate the opposition.
Mrs. Clinton, of New York, delivered an intensely populist speech here and at a rally earlier in Harrisburg, blasting the oil companies and promising to create jobs and make college affordable. She also reprised her past complaints that Mr. Obama, of Illinois, did not always say what he meant. She said that while he had suggested that, as president, he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and withdraw troops from Iraq in 16 months, for example, his top advisers had indicated otherwise.
Mr. Obama, in his first campaign visit to Pennsylvania, did not hold one of his usual big rallies. Instead, he appeared before a few dozen people at a factory in Bucks County that makes wind turbines, reprising glimpses of his plan to expand health care, create more environmentally friendly jobs and provide tax breaks to working families.
But Ms. Ferraro’s comments dominated the day. Reached at her home in Manhattan on Tuesday evening, she said that, in her original remarks, she was asked why there had been so much excitement about Mr. Obama’s candidacy. “And I said, ‘I think part of it is because he’s black,’ ” she said. “People are excited about this historic candidacy. I am, too.”
But the Obama campaign “twisted” her remarks, she said. “I am livid at this thing,” she said. “Any time you say anything to anybody about the Obama campaign, it immediately becomes a racist attack.”
The Clinton campaign did not contact her on Tuesday, Ms. Ferraro said. “I don’t want them to reach out to me,” she said. “I’m exercising my First Amendment rights. If they don’t like it, tough. I don’t intend ever to have anybody tell me that I can’t say what I want to say.”
Ms. Ferraro said her involvement with the Clinton campaign had been vastly overstated. When asked what her role is, she said: “None. None.”
Last fall, Ms. Ferraro also indicated that she thought Mr. Obama was getting preferential treatment from the press. “It’s O.K. in this country to be sexist,” she said then. “’It’s certainly not O.K. to be racist. I think if Barack Obama had been attacked for two hours — well, I don’t think Barack Obama would have been attacked for two hours,” she said, referring to a Democratic debate.
As the day went along, the Obama campaign grew increasingly angry over the remarks, and in the late afternoon, Mr. Obama himself called them “divisive” and “patently absurd.”
Mrs. Clinton later distanced herself from Ms. Ferraro’s comments, telling The Associated Press that she did not agree with what Ms. Ferraro had said.
“It is regrettable that any of our supporters, on both sides, because we’ve both had that experience, say things that kind of veer off into the personal,” Mrs. Clinton said.
Katharine Q. Seelye reported from Philadelphia, and Julie Bosman from New York. Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting from Fairless Hills, Pa.
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE and JULIE BOSMAN
PHILADELPHIA — The Democratic presidential contest was jolted Tuesday by accusations surrounding race and sex, set off by remarks from Geraldine A. Ferraro that Senator Barack Obama had received preferential treatment because he is a black man.
Ms. Ferraro, the former congresswoman and vice-presidential candidate who backs Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, told The Daily Breeze, a newspaper in Torrance, Calif.: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”
She made the comments last week, but on Tuesday, the Obama camp latched on to them, calling them outrageous and demanding that Mrs. Clinton repudiate them.
In an interview on Tuesday night, Ms. Ferraro defended her comments and said she was furious with the Obama campaign, accusing it of twisting her words.
“Every time that campaign is upset about something, they call it racist,” she said. “I will not be discriminated against because I’m white. If they think they’re going to shut up Geraldine Ferraro with that kind of stuff, they don’t know me.”
Despite calls that Ms. Ferraro step down from the Clinton campaign, where she is a member of the finance committee, there was no indication on Tuesday that she would.
The Ferraro comments overshadowed an increasingly bitter dispute between the campaigns about the candidates’ qualifications to serve as commander in chief. On Tuesday, Greg Craig, a former official in the administration of President Bill Clinton, and now a vocal supporter of Mr. Obama, issued a blistering rebuttal to Mrs. Clinton’s assertions that she had been deeply involved in her husband’s foreign policy successes.
“She never managed a foreign policy crisis, and there is no evidence to suggest that she participated in the decision-making that occurred in connection with any such crisis,” Mr. Craig said. Referring to her “red phone” commercial, he said, “As far as the record shows, Senator Clinton never answered the phone either to make a decision on any pressing national security issue — not at 3 a.m. or at any other time of day.”
The Clinton campaign said that Mr. Craig’s memorandum was baseless and that the Obama campaign had been unable to make a positive case for Mr. Obama’s experience.
Mr. Obama and the Clintons campaigned Tuesday in Pennsylvania, opening up a new front in the long-running and increasingly bitter contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. The state does not vote until April 22, and there are no contests before then, leaving the candidates six full weeks to try to make news here while their surrogates proceed to eviscerate the opposition.
Mrs. Clinton, of New York, delivered an intensely populist speech here and at a rally earlier in Harrisburg, blasting the oil companies and promising to create jobs and make college affordable. She also reprised her past complaints that Mr. Obama, of Illinois, did not always say what he meant. She said that while he had suggested that, as president, he would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and withdraw troops from Iraq in 16 months, for example, his top advisers had indicated otherwise.
Mr. Obama, in his first campaign visit to Pennsylvania, did not hold one of his usual big rallies. Instead, he appeared before a few dozen people at a factory in Bucks County that makes wind turbines, reprising glimpses of his plan to expand health care, create more environmentally friendly jobs and provide tax breaks to working families.
But Ms. Ferraro’s comments dominated the day. Reached at her home in Manhattan on Tuesday evening, she said that, in her original remarks, she was asked why there had been so much excitement about Mr. Obama’s candidacy. “And I said, ‘I think part of it is because he’s black,’ ” she said. “People are excited about this historic candidacy. I am, too.”
But the Obama campaign “twisted” her remarks, she said. “I am livid at this thing,” she said. “Any time you say anything to anybody about the Obama campaign, it immediately becomes a racist attack.”
The Clinton campaign did not contact her on Tuesday, Ms. Ferraro said. “I don’t want them to reach out to me,” she said. “I’m exercising my First Amendment rights. If they don’t like it, tough. I don’t intend ever to have anybody tell me that I can’t say what I want to say.”
Ms. Ferraro said her involvement with the Clinton campaign had been vastly overstated. When asked what her role is, she said: “None. None.”
Last fall, Ms. Ferraro also indicated that she thought Mr. Obama was getting preferential treatment from the press. “It’s O.K. in this country to be sexist,” she said then. “’It’s certainly not O.K. to be racist. I think if Barack Obama had been attacked for two hours — well, I don’t think Barack Obama would have been attacked for two hours,” she said, referring to a Democratic debate.
As the day went along, the Obama campaign grew increasingly angry over the remarks, and in the late afternoon, Mr. Obama himself called them “divisive” and “patently absurd.”
Mrs. Clinton later distanced herself from Ms. Ferraro’s comments, telling The Associated Press that she did not agree with what Ms. Ferraro had said.
“It is regrettable that any of our supporters, on both sides, because we’ve both had that experience, say things that kind of veer off into the personal,” Mrs. Clinton said.
Katharine Q. Seelye reported from Philadelphia, and Julie Bosman from New York. Jeff Zeleny contributed reporting from Fairless Hills, Pa.
Predictions of big win in Miss. for Obama
From the Boston Globe
Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor
Barack Obama reasserted his claim tonight as front-runner in the Democratic presidential race by winning the Mississippi primary, according to projections by Fox News, NBC News,
CNN, and the Associated Press.
Obama also easily won the caucuses in Wyoming on Saturday after Hillary Clinton kept her campaign alive last Tuesday with wins in Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas.
He is likely to win most of the 33 delegates at stake tonight in Mississippi and extend his lead in delegates, which stood at 106 before today. With 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the nomination, Obama had 1,579 to Clinton's 1,473, according to the Associated Press tally, which includes committed superdelegates.
Black voters, who have overwhelmingly supported Obama in earlier primaries, made up about half the electorate in Mississippi, according to exit polling conducted for the TV networks and the AP.
While Obama dismissed talk of a so-called dream ticket, six in 10 Obama supporters said he should pick Clinton as his vice president if he wins the nomination. Four in 10 of Clinton voters said she should put Obama on the ticket. But while one in five Clinton voters said Obama is more likely than Clinton to beat Republican John McCain in November; only about one in 20 Obama voters said Clinton was more likely than their candidate to defeat McCain.
Both candidates are already pointing toward Pennsylvania, the next big test on April 22 with 158 delegates up for grabs. That primary looms as another potential turning point -- just as Ohio and Texas were. Clinton, who is favored, needs to win to keep her campaign's momentum. Obama has another chance to deal a devastating blow because a Clinton loss would increase pressure on her to drop out for the good of the party.
Posted by Foon Rhee, deputy national political editor
Barack Obama reasserted his claim tonight as front-runner in the Democratic presidential race by winning the Mississippi primary, according to projections by Fox News, NBC News,
CNN, and the Associated Press.
Obama also easily won the caucuses in Wyoming on Saturday after Hillary Clinton kept her campaign alive last Tuesday with wins in Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas.
He is likely to win most of the 33 delegates at stake tonight in Mississippi and extend his lead in delegates, which stood at 106 before today. With 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the nomination, Obama had 1,579 to Clinton's 1,473, according to the Associated Press tally, which includes committed superdelegates.
Black voters, who have overwhelmingly supported Obama in earlier primaries, made up about half the electorate in Mississippi, according to exit polling conducted for the TV networks and the AP.
While Obama dismissed talk of a so-called dream ticket, six in 10 Obama supporters said he should pick Clinton as his vice president if he wins the nomination. Four in 10 of Clinton voters said she should put Obama on the ticket. But while one in five Clinton voters said Obama is more likely than Clinton to beat Republican John McCain in November; only about one in 20 Obama voters said Clinton was more likely than their candidate to defeat McCain.
Both candidates are already pointing toward Pennsylvania, the next big test on April 22 with 158 delegates up for grabs. That primary looms as another potential turning point -- just as Ohio and Texas were. Clinton, who is favored, needs to win to keep her campaign's momentum. Obama has another chance to deal a devastating blow because a Clinton loss would increase pressure on her to drop out for the good of the party.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Florida and Michigan Again?
Cost might be a problem, particularly when thinking about finding the money for the Presidential and Congressional elections in November.
This from AP.
Cost a Hurdle for Mich., Fla. Do-Overs
By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The biggest stumbling block to doing over the Democratic primaries in Michigan and Florida may be the cost.
Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer estimates it would cost the state party $8 million to $12 million to set up party-run election sites and allow voting by mail or over the Internet.
Florida Democrats could be facing even higher costs.
During a meeting Wednesday night among House Democrats from Florida and Michigan, Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida relayed estimates that another primary would cost the state between $22 million and $24 million, a vote-by-mail contest would cost at least $8 million and the bill for a caucus would be about $4 million, said Hastings spokesman David Goldenberg.
Michigan and Florida both held January primaries but were stripped of their delegates for breaking Democratic National Committee rules by moving their contests to earlier dates. The national committee has suggested that the two states hold another round of presidential contests that would meet party rules and allow their delegates to be seated.
But with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in a tight race for the nomination, setting up new elections isn't so simple. Clinton won both states' primaries, but all the Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in either state, and Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan.
Negotiations over what kind of do-over contests would be held and how they would be set up have been contentious. Neither side wants to give the other a possible advantage.
The state parties could pay for the contests by raising money from major Democratic donors. Under the law, state parties can collect so-called soft money — donations of unlimited amounts — to cover the costs of elections.
The type of donors who have the deep pockets needed, however, have already taken sides in the Democratic contest and would probably look for signals from the respective campaigns as to whether to help the states out.
Clinton has said repeatedly that the Michigan and Florida delegations should be seated. Some of her supporters — including Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm — have begun talking about holding a do-over election, but Clinton backers aren't completely in sync on whether to have another election.
Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, has called for a new Florida primary, although he thinks the national party should pay for it. But Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz says another election would be too expensive.
"The potential of a do-over is slim to none," said Wasserman Schultz, a national co-chair of Clinton's campaign. "The cost of a do-over is beyond reach. A do-over would be unfair. We still have nerves that are very raw from the 2000 recount in Florida."
"There isn't the capacity in the state party here to raise the $18 to $20 million to rerun the primary," Wasserman Schultz added.
Obama has not been as open to having Florida and Michigan vote again, even though he could do well in Michigan, where his supporters couldn't cast ballots for him in the primary.
"Hillary Clinton has been very competitive, and she's won her fair share of states. But to say, `Now I have a little momentum, you should count Florida and Michigan' ... that doesn't appear to be fair to Obama," said state Sen. Tupac Hunter of Detroit, one of three Obama co-chairs in Michigan. "If you change the rules midstream, you have a situation where it can be perceived as giving one candidate something over another unfairly."
Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, who pushed for moving up Michigan's primary but has not endorsed a candidate, issued a statement Friday in which he said that he "doesn't see at this time a practical and fair way to hold a do-over election in Michigan given the immense financial and logistical hurdles."
DNC Chairman Howard Dean earlier this week ruled out the national organization paying for do-over elections, because the national party needs its money for the general election.
"The rules were set a year and a half ago," Dean said Thursday. "Florida and Michigan voted for them, then decided that they didn't need to abide by the rules."
Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said Thursday he would sign a bill for a new Democratic primary — legislation is needed — but only if it was a last resort and only if the national party pays for it. But that seems unlikely, given Dean's insistence that he won't pay.
Michigan party chairman Brewer said he won't ask the state of Michigan to pay for another election. Asked where he'd get the money, Brewer replied, "We'd have to go out and raise it."
Possible donors could be unions or wealthy Democrats such as George Soros of Westchester, N.Y., or Jon Stryker of Kalamazoo, Mich.
But the efforts could sap money the parties had planned to use to help Democratic candidates in November and to get out the vote for the presidential nominee.
"There's only so much money," Brewer said.
This from AP.
Cost a Hurdle for Mich., Fla. Do-Overs
By KATHY BARKS HOFFMAN
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The biggest stumbling block to doing over the Democratic primaries in Michigan and Florida may be the cost.
Michigan Democratic Chairman Mark Brewer estimates it would cost the state party $8 million to $12 million to set up party-run election sites and allow voting by mail or over the Internet.
Florida Democrats could be facing even higher costs.
During a meeting Wednesday night among House Democrats from Florida and Michigan, Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida relayed estimates that another primary would cost the state between $22 million and $24 million, a vote-by-mail contest would cost at least $8 million and the bill for a caucus would be about $4 million, said Hastings spokesman David Goldenberg.
Michigan and Florida both held January primaries but were stripped of their delegates for breaking Democratic National Committee rules by moving their contests to earlier dates. The national committee has suggested that the two states hold another round of presidential contests that would meet party rules and allow their delegates to be seated.
But with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in a tight race for the nomination, setting up new elections isn't so simple. Clinton won both states' primaries, but all the Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in either state, and Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan.
Negotiations over what kind of do-over contests would be held and how they would be set up have been contentious. Neither side wants to give the other a possible advantage.
The state parties could pay for the contests by raising money from major Democratic donors. Under the law, state parties can collect so-called soft money — donations of unlimited amounts — to cover the costs of elections.
The type of donors who have the deep pockets needed, however, have already taken sides in the Democratic contest and would probably look for signals from the respective campaigns as to whether to help the states out.
Clinton has said repeatedly that the Michigan and Florida delegations should be seated. Some of her supporters — including Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm — have begun talking about holding a do-over election, but Clinton backers aren't completely in sync on whether to have another election.
Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, has called for a new Florida primary, although he thinks the national party should pay for it. But Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz says another election would be too expensive.
"The potential of a do-over is slim to none," said Wasserman Schultz, a national co-chair of Clinton's campaign. "The cost of a do-over is beyond reach. A do-over would be unfair. We still have nerves that are very raw from the 2000 recount in Florida."
"There isn't the capacity in the state party here to raise the $18 to $20 million to rerun the primary," Wasserman Schultz added.
Obama has not been as open to having Florida and Michigan vote again, even though he could do well in Michigan, where his supporters couldn't cast ballots for him in the primary.
"Hillary Clinton has been very competitive, and she's won her fair share of states. But to say, `Now I have a little momentum, you should count Florida and Michigan' ... that doesn't appear to be fair to Obama," said state Sen. Tupac Hunter of Detroit, one of three Obama co-chairs in Michigan. "If you change the rules midstream, you have a situation where it can be perceived as giving one candidate something over another unfairly."
Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, who pushed for moving up Michigan's primary but has not endorsed a candidate, issued a statement Friday in which he said that he "doesn't see at this time a practical and fair way to hold a do-over election in Michigan given the immense financial and logistical hurdles."
DNC Chairman Howard Dean earlier this week ruled out the national organization paying for do-over elections, because the national party needs its money for the general election.
"The rules were set a year and a half ago," Dean said Thursday. "Florida and Michigan voted for them, then decided that they didn't need to abide by the rules."
Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist said Thursday he would sign a bill for a new Democratic primary — legislation is needed — but only if it was a last resort and only if the national party pays for it. But that seems unlikely, given Dean's insistence that he won't pay.
Michigan party chairman Brewer said he won't ask the state of Michigan to pay for another election. Asked where he'd get the money, Brewer replied, "We'd have to go out and raise it."
Possible donors could be unions or wealthy Democrats such as George Soros of Westchester, N.Y., or Jon Stryker of Kalamazoo, Mich.
But the efforts could sap money the parties had planned to use to help Democratic candidates in November and to get out the vote for the presidential nominee.
"There's only so much money," Brewer said.
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