Clinton camp: Uncommitted Mich. voters should not go to Obama

Howard Wolfson, a senior adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), said Thursday he misspoke at a breakfast with reporters earlier this month when he said the campaign was open to conceding Michigan voters who voted “uncommitted” to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

On a conference call with reporters, Harold Ickes, another senior campaign adviser, said the position of the campaign going into the May 31 meeting of the Democratic National Committee's (DNC) rules and bylaws committee is that the delegates representing those uncommitted voters should be considered uncommitted.

{mosads}When asked about what seemed to be a change of position, Wolfson at first said it should be assumed that most uncommitted voters would vote for Obama.

Ickes, however, said Thursday it would be “presumptuous to assume that each and every one of those delegates is an Obama supporter.” He added that the committee should not “force” those delegates to support one candidate over another.

Wolfson acknowledged that the campaign would look to uncommitted delegates who might have been supporters of former Sen. John Edwards (N.C.), New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson or Sen. Joseph Biden (Del.) — three candidates who, like Obama, were not on the ballot. Sen. Chris Dodd (Conn.) was on the ballot with Clinton.

“Anyone who’s uncommitted at that point is going to get an awful lot of attention from both campaigns,” Wolfson said.

Michigan voters went to the polls on Jan. 15 in defiance of DNC rules, leading the party to strip both Michigan and Florida, which also jumped ahead in the schedule, of their votes.

Clinton won both states and now sees the original results as crucial to any hopes she has of winning the nomination.

The issue is the order of business at the May 31 meeting, and Ickes, a legendary "vote-counter" and party insider, said Thursday that the campaign has been working the phones and "cases are being made."

Ickes said the heads of the rules and bylaws committee have been in talks with both campaigns, but he said it would be “speculation to try and figure out how these people are going to vote.”