Also In This Issue Related stories: How To Count The Supers • The K-Street Superdelegates Related Resources On NationalJournal.com Political Connections: "The Movement And The Maverick" (2/22/08) · Wealth Of Nations: "Battle Of The Two Obamas" (2/22/08) · PolitiScope: "Watch And Learn" (2/21/08) · On The Trail: "Does McCain Have An Independent Problem?" (2/20/08) · National Journal: "Obama Keeps Momentum Going" (2/20/08) · Social Studies: "For The GOP, A Tonic Named McCain" (2/15/08) · Off To The Races: "Up For The Count" (2/12/08) · National Journal On Air: Interviews With Mark Penn and David Axelrod (2/8/08) · Ad Spotlight: WH 2008 Ad Archive · Well-Read Wonk: Reviews Of Books Written By WH 2008 Candidates [an error occurred while processing this directive] Additional Resources On The Web CNN: Who Are The Democratic Superdelegates? · MSNBC: Delegate Laaderboard

By James A. Barnes and Peter H. Stone, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Feb. 22, 2008

It's not easy being a superdelegate. Consider Sarah Swisher, the vice chair of Iowa's Democratic Party: "So far, I've been for [John] Edwards and [Hillary Rodham] Clinton, and now my union has endorsed [Barack] Obama," Swisher said last week. She had originally endorsed the former senator from North Carolina in the caucuses but switched her support to the senator from New York after Edwards dropped out of the race. Then the Service Employees International Union, of which Swisher is a member, came out for the senator from Illinois.

Like many superdelegates, Swisher is at the center of the pitched battle between Obama and Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination -- a fight that could turn on her vote and those of the 796 other superdelegates, the elected and party officials who have automatic seats on the convention floor in Denver.

And like many superdelegates, Swisher has been tugged in different directions. She was personally lobbied by Harold Ickes, the head of the Clinton superdelegate apparatus and a fellow member of the Democratic National Committee. Swisher's governor, Chet Culver, who has endorsed Obama, also lobbied her.

After reflecting on the race and her union's endorsement, Swisher decided to switch to Obama. When she called to inform the Clinton camp of her decision, Swisher said, they were "very nice and understanding."

"I think the superdelegate thing is pumped up and getting way too much attention," she said. "I believe it's going to be, as it ought to be, decided by the will of the greater party -- all those people who have voted in primaries and the delegates who have come up through the county conventions and state conventions."

But both Clinton and Obama are courting superdelegates as if they will be the deciders, a position that many who remain undecided are not eager to be in. Said former Democratic Rep. Tim Roemer of Indiana, who is helping to round up superdelegates for Obama: "A couple of them liked the attention and enjoyed talking, but a number of them seem ready to go on a three-month vacation to Mount Everest."

And Roemer faces some stiff competition in his hunt for superdelegates. He said that in the past few weeks he has called at least a half-dozen superdelegates who recently had either spoken to former President Clinton or had messages from him on their answering machines.

The Hunters
The Clinton and Obama campaigns are expanding their outreach efforts to woo superdelegates. In the Clinton camp, Ickes, the veteran party strategist and longtime adviser to both Hillary and Bill Clinton, oversees a team of about a dozen people that meets twice a week to exchange intelligence on the superdelegate count and to discuss strategies. Ickes is also drawing on the extensive network of Clinton administration alumni outside the campaign staff to assist in monitoring and to determine the best ways to approach individual superdelegates.

"We're expanding our delegate-selection team," Ickes said, noting that getting superdelegates on board has become harder for both campaigns. "When the process first started, we both got people who were natural supporters." But now, he added, new pickups have become scarcer "given how evenly positioned the two campaigns are."

Generally, Ickes said, superdelegates express a "variety of concerns" as they try to make up their minds. For members of Congress, one worry is how an endorsement will "play" in their district or state. Ickes said that some superdelegates may want assurances that they'll be consulted on issues on which they may differ with the candidate, so that "they're not blindsided."

Other superdelegates may seek assurances that they can expect fundraising help, if needed. "All of this is very legitimate," he said, but stressed: "There are no promises qua promises."

Part of the effort involves keeping superdelegates informed of campaign developments, so that they don't get jittery. Last week, for example, Ickes met with about 30 members on Capitol Hill to talk about Clinton's recent string of primary setbacks.

At that session, a member who was sticking by Clinton asked for advice on how to respond to the argument that superdelegates should reflect the primary returns in their districts. Ickes pointed out that lawmakers have at times voted on legislation based on their consciences rather than the interests of their constituents. According to one participant, "everybody nodded."

The Obama camp's campaign to woo superdelegates may not be as extensive as the Clinton team's, but the strategists have been beefing up their efforts. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is a key outside contact for superdelegates, and Matt Nugen is helping to spearhead the effort inside the campaign.

Democratic Party elder Jim Johnson -- who managed Walter Mondale's presidential campaign in 1984 and oversaw the vetting of prospective running mates for John Kerry in 2004 -- is also helping with outreach efforts. Johnson, who is concentrating on governors, House members, and senators, has been an Obama supporter since last spring but recently assumed a larger role in the superdelegate hunt, according to an Obama source. The source described him as a "primary point person" in the effort.

Daschle acknowledged that persuading the 400-odd superdelegates who remain uncommitted to join Obama has become more challenging. But he was upbeat about recent coups in winning converts from Clinton's column and some superdelegates who had supported Edwards.

Still, Daschle said, "we're up against the best" in the Clinton campaign.

Sometimes, Daschle noted, the key to success is determining "who the best person is to call some of the undecideds." Besides Daschle and Roemer, who runs the Center for National Policy, those working the phones for Obama include Sens. Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano.

Napolitano said her contact with fellow governors and other superdelegates is "pretty straightforward." She said she shares her thought process on how she decided to support Obama over Clinton, "because there's some interest in that." Among those Napolitano courted was Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington, who ended up backing Obama before her state's caucuses on February 9, which the senator from Illinois won handily.

But many superdelegates have now chosen to wait for either Clinton or Obama to establish a decisive advantage in the nominating contest. "For the most part, the uncommitted delegates are staying uncommitted," Napolitano said. "They're kind of waiting to see how the next weeks play out."

Still, the candidates' callers aren't letting up. Daschle said he was phoning superdelegates even while traveling in China recently.

The Hunted
In deciding whom to support, members of Congress face a swirl of competing pressures from constituents, interest groups, colleagues, the candidates, and their own consciences.

The easiest out for members is to cast their lot with their constituents. A week before the February 19 Wisconsin primary, Democratic Rep. Ron Kind pledged his vote to whichever candidate got the most support from his 3rd District constituents Obama won his district Tuesday night.

Rep. Artur Davis, D-Ala., an early Obama supporter, said that Clinton backers in states with competitive primaries may find their initial position untenable. "They won't want to jeopardize their local political support," Davis said. "I am aware of members who have had the political difficulty in their position pointed out to them."

Of course, that problem cuts both ways. Among California's representatives, five who endorsed Clinton saw their constituents go with Obama, while five who endorsed Obama watched their districts swing to Clinton.

Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., whose Denver voters went largely for Obama in the state's Super Tuesday caucuses, endorsed Clinton. She said her constituents understand why she's sticking with Clinton. "When I and others make an endorsement, we don't back out," DeGette said. She also noted that lawmakers who have not yet endorsed a candidate are unlikely to do so now, given the uncertainty of the race. "People who are going to commit mostly are committed at this point," DeGette said. "Others would be foolish to commit now because they risk alienating the other candidate."

In addition to their constituents, some lawmakers must consider how their support will be received by various segments of the national electorate. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who has endorsed Clinton, now is grappling with that decision. He has indicated he might switch to Obama if the first African-American with a serious chance of winning the White House arrives at the convention with a delegate advantage. That would bring the gravitas of Lewis's civil-rights legacy to the senator from Illinois. Rep. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., whose University of Wisconsin (Madison) district favored Obama overwhelmingly on Tuesday, has joined most gay-rights advocates in backing Clinton.

Senators -- who face the voters less frequently than House members -- seemed generally inclined to the view that they can make up their own minds. "I'll be considering what I think is best for the state and, obviously, for the country, and also basic questions about who can win," said Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa. Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., said a week before his state's primary that the outcome would be a factor in his decision on whom to back -- especially if the vote was lopsided -- but that it wouldn't be the only factor. "I have strong feelings about both candidates in a very positive sense, and so do many of my supporters and constituents," Feingold said.

If the nomination fight goes all the way to the convention, uncommitted senators could play a decisive role in the outcome. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he's staying neutral as long as he can, given his role as an impartial broker of health care legislation in the Senate. "I assume there's some chance this will go all the way to the afternoon of August 20-something, and if that's the case, I'll have to swallow hard and make a judgment," he said.

Indeed, most lawmakers seem to dread the possibility that the nomination could come down to backroom deals in Denver, but if it does, it seems unlikely that such dealing would be rejected. "I wouldn't be surprised if, later on, when things really get tight and it turns out to be a deal-maker, some people may leverage that vote, for whatever reason," Kind said. "I think that would just be a horrible symbol for our party and our country that someone might get nominated based on some backroom deals."

Lawmakers who remain uncommitted are choosing their words carefully -- or saying nothing at all. Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., has advised her staff to handle constituent demands that she commit to either Clinton or Obama by explaining that she is neutral. "That seems to be working for the time being," said her press secretary, Emily Kryder. "People are understanding."

Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., views the process as an opportunity to educate people about the role of superdelegates. "We are people who are in a position to make some midcourse corrections" in the nominating contest, if necessary, he said. But Clyburn doesn't think it will come to that in 2008. "The role of superdelegates is to extend the will of the people, not reverse it," he cautioned.

Obama has said that the superdelegates should simply affirm the candidate who wins the most pledged delegates coming out of the primaries and caucuses, and his supporters generally echo that view. Clinton supporters say that superdelegates should let the primaries run their course and then exercise their own judgment. "There is an important role for us later in the game," said Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., a Clinton supporter. "We can help in the consensus-building but not with disproportionate influence."

Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., an Obama backer, also doesn't envision a fight to the bitter end on the convention floor in Denver. "I don't think we're going to have a problem here because the superdelegates have been in the political process a long time, and they know that a convention that would appear to steal the popular majority in favor of the insider candidate would be disastrous for the campaign ahead."

National Journal contacted 39 Democratic members of Congress who participate in the magazine's Congressional Insiders Poll and asked them which of the following should be the most important factor in deciding whom to support: the views of their constituents, the overall results of the primaries and caucuses, or their own conscience. A plurality of the 11 members who support Obama said that the overall results should be the signpost. A solid majority of the 12 Clinton endorsers said that their consciences should be their guide. Of the 16 members who are uncommitted, 11 said that conscience should be the most important factor, four cited the overall results of the primaries and caucuses, and one said a combination of all three factors.

The History
Superdelegates are a relatively new phenomenon at Democratic conventions, and they normally don't face the possibility that they could decide the nomination.

In 1981, still reeling from the landslide election of Ronald Reagan, the Democratic National Committee set up a commission chaired by then-North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt to revise the party's presidential nominating rules to give elected officials a greater role in selecting the party's quadrennial standard-bearer.

On the recommendations of the Hunt Commission, the DNC in 1982 established a new class of unpledged delegates -- popularly known as superdelegates -- who were mainly party and elected officials. Automatic slots were set aside for 60 percent of the Democratic membership of the House and the Senate, and for each state Democratic Party's chair and vice chair. Approximately 250 other slots were set aside for big-city mayors and party leaders who were selected by their respective state party committees or conventions. That amounted to 568 superdelegates at the 1984 convention.

The main rationale for establishing superdelegates, especially the contingent from Capitol Hill, was to draw the party's congressional wing closer to its presidential nominee. Such an alliance was meant to increase the ticket's chances of winning in November and invest the superdelegates in the new president's governing agenda. Reformers also hoped that the superdelegates would provide an element of peer review in determining the nominee and represent the interests of their rank-and-file constituents in the process. They would, in other words, be a moderating influence at the convention, a place where most delegates were interest-group activists or owed their loyalty to the nominee and not the broader party.

"The idea was that they were supposed to exercise their judgment, being people who were elected from broader constituencies than the delegates might have been," said Al From, chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, who in 1981 worked for Rep. Gillis Long, D-La., a leading advocate of bringing members back into the party's presidential nominating process.

At the 1980 convention, the participation of members of Congress had dropped to a record low: Only 13 percent of Democratic House members were delegates, and only 15 percent of senators attended the party conclave. Proponents of the superdelegate approach insisted that the only way to include more members of Congress at the convention was to allow them to be uncommitted delegates.

In their first year of existence, superdelegates ended up playing a critical role in the Democrats' nomination of former Vice President Mondale. When the House Democratic Caucus elected its 164 superdelegates in early February, Mondale won the lion's share because of his long ties to Democrats on Capitol Hill and his front-runner status, and he gained an instant and sizable lead in the delegate tally before any caucus or primary was held. "We had the first primary and won it," recalled veteran presidential campaign strategist Tad Devine, who worked in the Mondale delegate operation in 1984.

At the end of the primary season, when then-Sen. Gary Hart of Colorado had won big on June 5, including in California, Devine was one of the Mondale delegate trackers who helped round up enough superdelegates to put the Minnesotan over the top. At the time, Mondale had built a lead over Hart in pledged delegates but was still shy of the magic number needed to win the nomination.

Hart and civil-rights leader Jesse Jackson, who also sought the Democratic nomination that year, complained that party rules had disadvantaged them. To keep peace at the convention and to head off any messy floor fights over credentials, Mondale agreed to appoint another commission to review the party's nominating rules. That Fairness Commission adopted a lower vote threshold for candidates to qualify for pledged delegates -- a measure intended to placate Jackson's supporters -- but it also increased the number of superdelegates to 644 for the 1988 convention. That increase occurred when the commission upped the percentage of congressional superdelegates from 60 to 80 percent of both chambers, and gave superdelegate status to all members of the DNC, not just to the state party chairs and vice chairs. Democratic governors also received superdelegate status.

The eventual 1988 nominee, then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, was willing to bargain away future superdelegates in exchange for peace at his convention. That year Jackson was the runner-up, and he was upset that his superdelegate support did not match the support he had received in the primaries. His negotiating team was led by Harold Ickes -- now Clinton's chief superdelegate hunter -- who got the Dukakis forces and the Democratic National Committee to agree to revise the party rules right after the convention. One result was that the superdelegate status of DNC members who were not state chairs or vice chairs was revoked.

But once again, after Dukakis lost, the DNC felt free to restore all its members as superdelegates. This change was facilitated by the new chairman of the committee, Ronald Brown, who had been Jackson's 1988 convention manager. Brown also restored some of the superdelegates selected by state party central committees, now called add-on delegates. (They account for 76 superdelegates this year.)

Ickes was once a skeptic of giving members of Congress and other party officials superdelegate status, recalling the 1968 convention when Lyndon Johnson so dominated the Democratic machinery that he was able to help steer the nomination to his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, to the dismay of his anti-war critics. "I generally have changed my view on that, and we need automatic delegates, like members of Congress, who have institutional interests that are longer-ranged than the pledged delegates who are recruited in the year of a presidential campaign and are very partisan with respect to their candidates," Ickes said.

For the 1996 convention, the DNC decided that all Democrats in the Senate and House could be superdelegates. That decision, along with the inexorable growth of the Democratic National Committee itself, led to the point today where superdelegates will account for 797 votes at the 2008 convention in Denver (assuming that two vacancies in the House formerly held by Democrats are filled by Democrats in upcoming special elections), or 19.7 percent of all delegates on the floor -- a record share. If the convention ends up seating the entire disputed delegations from Florida and Michigan, the total number of superdelegates will be 850, or 19.4 percent.

--Staff Correspondents Randy Barrett, Lisa Caruso, Richard E. Cohen, Brian Friel, and Alexis Simendinger contributed to this report.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Need A Reprint Of This Article?
National Journal Group offers both print and electronic reprint services, as well as permissions for academic use, photocopying and republication. Click here to order, or call us at 877-394-7350.