Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in a statement Friday that she had ask her delegates to this summer’s national party convention in Denver to allow the seating of delegates from Michigan and Florida, even though the national party took away all delegates from the two states as punishment for holding early primaries.
That’s not a big surprise since Clinton easily won Michigan’s primary in which Sen. Barack Obama and John Edwards removed their names from the ballot. And she is a heavy favorite to win in Tuesday’s Florida primary.
“I believe our nominee will need the enthusiastic support of Democrats in these states to win the general election,” Clinton said in a statement. “I hope to be president of all 50 states and U.S. territories, and that we have all 50 states represented and counted at the Democratic convention.”
Obama’s campaign said Clinton’s statement was a transparent attempt to gain an advantage in Florida.
“Now that Sen. Clinton’s worried about losing the first Southern primary” in South Carolina, “she’s using Florida for her own political gain by trying to assign meaning to a contest that awards zero delegates and where no campaigning has occurred,” Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, said in a statement.
Plouffe said Obama would campaign vigorously in Michigan and Florida if he becomes the Democratic nominee.
The campaign of former Sen. Edwards did not respond to requests to comment on the seating of delegates.
Michigan and Florida lawmakers wanted to have more of an influence on selecting the parties’ nominee for president, so both states moved their primary dates up.
The Democratic National Committee punished the states by ruling that their delegates would not seated at the national convention.
The Republican National Committee also sanctioned the two states’ parties, removing half their delegates for the September convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul.
But the GOP candidates assured state party officials that the whole delegations would be seated.