March 05, 2008 09:46 pm
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By Joe Hadsall and Roger McKinney
news@joplinglobe.com
After primary victories Tuesday for Sen. Hillary Clinton in Ohio, Rhode Island and Texas, the race for the Democratic presidential nomination likely will rest with party superdelegates.
Neither Clinton nor Sen. Barack Obama has enough regular delegates to seal the nomination, said Burdett Loomis, a political science professor at the University of Kansas.
“The math here is very clear,” Loomis said. “Because of the proportional awarding of delegates, nobody’s going to get the 2,025 necessary for the nomination.
“Today, the prospect of going to the convention with real uncertainty is much higher than it was just a day or two ago.”
While regular delegates are committed to candidates based on the votes in their states, superdelegates are not bound in their choices.
“These are insiders who don’t care who the nominee is, as long as they are good for the party,” said Tom Simpson, a political science professor at Missouri Southern State University. “Their superseding role is to protect the party, so they will support whomever they think will be the most likely victor.”
Missouri Democrats have 72 regular delegates to the national convention — 36 of them pledged to Obama and 36 to Clinton. On Super Tuesday on Feb. 5, 49.2 percent of Democrats chose Obama, and 48 percent chose Clinton.
So Missouri’s vote will swing according to the 16 superdelegates, said Jack Cardetti, spokesman for the Missouri Democratic Party.
“They will vote how they want regardless of the primary results,” Cardetti said. “They don’t have to tell us how they vote, so they are free to vote how they want.”
Of Missouri’s 16 superdelegates, four are supporting Clinton and four have pledged to back Obama. Six are undecided and apparently will remain so until the Democratic National Convention in August. Two of the 16 superdelegates have not yet been named.
In Oklahoma, seven of nine superdelegates remain uncommitted. Kansas has five of nine superdelegates — one yet to be named — who are undecided.
Obama won the Kansas caucuses in February, getting 74 percent to Clinton’s 25.8 percent. Oklahoma voters in the Feb. 5 primary favored Clinton over Obama, 54.8 percent to 31.2 percent.
The Democrats’ system allows for delegates to be won proportionally in the states. The Republican Party generally goes with a winner-take-all system.
“They (Democrats) rewrote the party rules to be more inclusive and guarantee a broader mix of delegates,” Simpson said. “The superdelegates have played a role in elections since then, but we haven’t had an election this combative.”
Ivan Holmes, chairman of the Oklahoma Democratic Party, said the attention and fierce campaign will benefit Democrats in the long run.
“This race has energized us in all 77 counties,” he said. “If they continue to be negative, then I could see that hurting, but this race will keep people fired up.”
Loomis, at the University of Kansas, said that even if primaries in Michigan and Florida are redone, as is being discussed, the number of regular delegates probably would remain evenly divided.
He said it may be troublesome for the Democrats if either contender is leading in regular delegates but the superdelegates throw the nomination to the contender who is trailing, but that’s how the rules work.
“The pressure to come up with a nominee is going to be tremendous,” Loomis said “It could go all the way to the convention, where you could have messy delegate fights over Florida and Michigan.”
Clinton prevailed in the Florida and Michigan primaries, but the national party stripped both states of all delegates for holding their primaries too early.
Delegate count
In the overall race for the nomination, Barack Obama had 1,567 delegates after picking up five new superdelegate endorsements Wednesday. Hillary Clinton had 1,462. It takes 2,025 delegates to secure the Democratic nomination.
Source: The Associated Press
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