Clinton Heads to North Dakota in Search of Delegates
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - With the Pennsylvania primary now less than 3 weeks away, Hillary Clinton is spending the next couple of days fund-raising in California, making a day trip to Memphis to commemorate Martin Luther King, Jr., and making a campaign stop in North Dakota.
Why North Dakota, a state that already voted back in February on Super Tuesday for Barack Obama?
According to the Clinton campaign, she'll will visit the state Democrats' convention tomorrow night, in hopes of dragging delegates over to her side, despite the fact that there is no pool of uncommitted delegates there.
With the nomination contest in flux, every single delegate matters. Clinton is expected to speak at the party convention in Grand Forks in hopes of getting these so called "committed" delegates to change their minds, something that is allowed under Democratic Party rules.
Some may see this as a questionable political move, but a campaign spokesman for Clinton said the practice was "common," pointing to final delegate counts in Iowa as an example, where Obama ended up with more delegates than originally expected. Similarly in Texas, Clinton ended up getting more delegates to switch over to her side than the campaign had planned for.
Clinton has been getting grief from members of her own party to stop trying to woo committed delegates and uncommitted superdelegates. Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., urged both candidates to support "the will of the people." Pelosi added, "It will do great harm to the Democratic party if it is perceived that the Super Delegates overturn the will of the people. That is consistent with the delegate voting his or her conscience."
Clinton maintains that delegates, both pledged and unpledged have the right to make up their own minds.