Clinton Easily Wins Puerto Rico

Extremely low turnout

NBC News and MSNBC reports:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won Puerto Rico’s Democratic presidential primary by a substantial margin Sunday, NBC News projected. But Clinton’s newly defiant campaign against her own party leaders may have been blunted by low turnout in the island territory while her rival edged ever closer to the nomination.

Puerto Rico, once a political asterisk in presidential contests, was seen as Clinton’s last best electoral chance as she tries to build a case that she has won more actual votes during the primary season than her rival, Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton’s campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, pushed that case strongly Sunday in an argument directed at unpledged party officials known as superdelegates.

“She continues to win these primaries. It’s extraordinary,” McAuliffe said in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. “She keeps running it up, and I think it shows Hillary’s strength for the fall.”

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a prominent supporter of Obama, maintained that “the important thing is the contest between Senator Obama and Senator John McCain.”

“That is what will really unify the Democratic Party and bring us victory in November,” she said in an interview with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.

At a rally in San Juan late Sunday afternoon, Clinton thanked Puerto Rican Democrats for “this show of overwhelming support” and vowed to fight on in primaries Tuesday in Montana and South Dakota.

Obama congratulated Clinton at a rally in South Dakota, but did not otherwise refer to the Puerto Rico results, which were expected to have little impact on the delegate race.

Low turnout

Election officials said turnout was extremely low, perhaps 400,000 out of nearly 3 million registered voters. So while polls showed Clinton holding a lead, she was likely to win a majority of the commonwealth’s 55 delegates but not get a huge influx of popular votes.

“Even though there is some enthusiasm, you cannot compare this with a general election in Puerto Rico,” said former San Juan Mayor Hector Luis Acevedo, the local representative of the Democratic Party.

Acevedo said the primary was organized in just fewer than 100 days, after the Democratic National Committee approved a switch from a caucus to a primary.

Clinton campaigned hard in Puerto Rico, spending several hours Saturday on the back of a pickup truck in a salsa-blasting, 40-vehicle caravan through the outskirts of San Juan. In a sign that her supporters were unwilling to give up, an outside group financed by her labor backers bought $150,000 worth of television ads on the island promoting her views.

The group, the American Leadership Project, was also spending $300,000 on ads in Tuesday’s primary states of Montana and South Dakota, where Obama is deemed the favorite. Clinton planned to campaign Monday in South Dakota.

Statehood debate hung over vote

Puerto Rico’s politics is dominated by two local parties, known as red and blue, divided over the issue of statehood.

Along those lines, Clinton often referred to “bringing red and blue together,” but Puerto Rico Senate President Kenneth McClintock, co-chairman of her campaign, said the local parties would not be working to get out the vote because there was no political benefit.

“The State Elections Commission has put very little advertising, contrary to what they usually do," he McClintock said. “We’ve had some factors against us.”

In addition, the smaller Partido Independista, which advocates full independence for the island, held a public protest of the vote Sunday in San Juan. It discouraged followers from participating in the contest because the commonwealth does not have a vote in the general election.

Acevedo and McClintock both said that even if local voters were not interested in the outcome, the attention that had been paid to Puerto Rico by the candidates and the national press would help the islands.

“The Puerto Rican voter and the Puerto Rican citizens will enjoy more benefits, more attention, more friends in the Senate of the United States no matter who wins,” Acevedo said. “We will have more attention to our problems and to the solutions than we will have had if we not have this primary in Puerto Rico.”

Clinton was winning roughly two-thirds of the votes in the U.S. territory as she continued a strong run through the last primaries that came too late to make a dent in Obama's overwhelming delegate lead.

Obama closes on delegate target

In defeat, Obama gained 17 delegates, leaving him 47 short of the 2,118 needed to become the first black presidential nominee of a major U.S. political party, according an Associated Press count.

Aides predicted the 46-year-old first-term Illinois senator could clinch the nomination as early as this week. Montana and South Dakota close out the primary season on Tuesday.

Campaigning in Mitchell, South Dakota, Obama said he was confident the party would unite, and praised Clinton in terms usually reserved for a vanquished rival. He told supporters that she would be "a great asset when we go into November" — the general election battle against Republican John McCain.

Obama has a total of 2,071 delegates in The Associated Press count, including the 17 from Puerto Rico. He also gained the support of two superdelegates — top party officials and lawmakers free to vote for any candidate during the day.

Clinton has 1915.5, including 38 from Puerto Rico.

There are 31 delegates combined at stake in Montana and South Dakota. Obama's high command sounded confident that enough superdelegates were poised to quickly declare their support and deliver him the nomination.

Obama's confidence reflected the outcome of Saturday's meeting of the Democratic Party's Rules and Bylaws Committee. Before an audience that jeered and cheered by turns, the panel voted to seat disputed delegations from Michigan and Florida, but give each of the 368 delegates only one-half vote rather than the full vote sought by the Clinton campaign.

It was a compromise that did no harm to Obama ’s near-claim to the nomination, but it infuriated the Clinton camp and prompted new threats to carry the fight to the August convention.

“This decision violates the bedrock principles of our democracy and our party,” the Clinton campaign said in a joint statement from Harold Ickes and Tina Flournoy, two of her advisers.

Clinton aims for popular vote

Saturday’s party meeting did strengthen one of Clinton’s key arguments for staying in the fight. In seating the Michigan and Florida delegates, party leaders tacitly acknowledged her popular vote dominance in those states.

By including the Michigan and Florida results, Clinton can claim to have won the most popular votes since the primaries and caucuses began in January. Both states were punished by the DNC for moving up their contests in violation of party rules, and the party had refused to recognize the votes. The candidates did not campaign in either state, and Obama withdrew his name from the Michigan ballot.

No Road Map For Democrats As Race Ends

Supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton protested Saturday as the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee met in Washington to discuss seating the Michigan and Florida delegations.

The New York Times reports:

The big drama now facing the Democratic Party in the presidential contest is how, when and even whether Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton will depart the race.

The contest is coming to a close as Puerto Rico votes on Sunday and Montana and South Dakota on Tuesday, finishing a process that began five months ago in Iowa. Even if those results do not put Senator Barack Obama over the top, aides to both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton said they expected enough superdelegates to rally behind Mr. Obama in the 48 hours after the final primaries to allow him to proclaim himself the nominee.

In many ways, Mr. Obama is wheezing across the finish line after making a strong start: He has won only 6 of the 13 Democratic contests held since March 4, drawing 6.1 million votes, compared with 6.6 million for Mrs. Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton has kept her counsel about what she might do to draw her campaign to a close. But when the rules committee of the Democratic Party divided up delegates from Michigan and Florida on Saturday night, Harold Ickes, a committee member and Clinton adviser, said she was reserving the right to contest the decision into the summer.

Still, despite the fireworks, Mrs. Clinton’s associates said she seemed to have come to terms over the last week with the near certainty that she would not win the nomination, even as she continued to assert, with what one associate described as subdued resignation, that the Democrats are making a mistake in sending Mr. Obama up against Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Her associates said the most likely outcome was that she would end her bid with a speech, probably back home in New York, in which she would endorse Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton herself suggested on Friday that the contest would end sometime next week.

But that is not a certainty; Mr. Obama’s announcement on Saturday that he would leave his church was just another reminder of how events continue to unfold in the race. She has signaled her ambivalence about the outcome, continuing to urge superdelegates to keep an open mind and consider, for example, the number of popular votes she has won. Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a superdelegate who has been at the forefront of calling for uncommitted Democrats to make a choice soon after the last vote, said in an interview that Mrs. Clinton called him last week and urged him to “keep an open mind until the convention.”

Assuming Mr. Obama reaches the number of delegates and superdelegates he needs to secure the nomination in the coming week, Mrs. Clinton will be faced with three options, associates said: to suspend her campaign and endorse Mr. Obama; to suspend her campaign without making an endorsement; or to press the fight through the convention. Several of Mrs. Clinton’s associates said it was unlikely she would fight through the convention, given the potential damage it would do to her standing in the party, which is increasingly eager to unify and turn to the battle against Mr. McCain.

Mrs. Clinton would almost surely face the defection of some of her highest-profile supporters, as well as some members of her staff. She would no doubt also face anger from Democratic leaders.

“In order for us to be successful in November, the runner-up is going to have to go all out in support of the nominee,” said Representative Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “The runner-up is going to have to be there from Day One. The support is going to have to be more than just lip service.”

Mr. Obama’s associates calculate he will need the votes of probably just 30 more superdelegates — elected Democrats and party leaders — to claim a majority of delegates after the last primary vote is counted, assuming expected outcomes in Puerto Rico, South Dakota and Montana.

With approval Saturday by the Democratic Party’s rules committee to seat Florida’s and Michigan’s delegates, though with a half vote each, Mr. Obama had secured 2,047.5 delegates, according to a count by The New York Times, leaving him 70.5 delegates short of what he needs to win the nomination. Eighty-six delegates are going to be allocated in Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota, and Mr. Obama is likely to get at least half of them.

As of Saturday, about 150 superdelegates remained officially uncommitted. Mr. Obama’s supporters have been hammering away at them, urging them to move quickly to his camp.

“A number of people have reported that various members intend to endorse AFTER the last primary,” said one e-mail message to wavering delegates from Mr. Obama’s supporters, its warning barely couched. “Those members need to understand that they won’t get any visibility from that.”

Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, who endorsed Mr. Obama nearly two months ago, recently called Gov. Bill Ritter Jr. of Colorado, who has yet to endorse a candidate. “Hey, Ritter!” Mr. Richardson said. “After June 3, it means nothing. Those who take a little bit of a risk, he’ll remember you.”

On the other end of the line, Mr. Ritter demurred, saying he had pledged to remain neutral until the primary season ends.

Mr. Obama has already turned his campaign away from Mrs. Clinton to face Mr. McCain. Mrs. Clinton is barely mentioned by Mr. Obama anymore, and his schedule is now focused as much on general election battlegrounds as it is on the remaining primaries. Mr. Obama is planning to mark the final election night of this primary season in St. Paul.

“That’s where the Republican convention is going to be,” said David Axelrod, the campaign’s chief strategist. “It seems like a good place to start the discussion about which direction we’re going to go as a country.”

Similarly, Mrs. Clinton and her aides have all but stopped their attacks on Mr. Obama, and the once vigorous Clinton war room has gone into a slumber.

Indeed, the talk in Mrs. Clinton’s headquarters has turned from the primary to more mundane matters: the next job, whom Mr. Obama might hire from the Clinton campaign, and even where to go on vacation.

The question in the weeks ahead is the extent to which the bitterness between these two candidates, both historic figures, can be erased. Two associates who spoke to Mrs. Clinton said they had no doubt that she would campaign for Mr. Obama without ambivalence, whether or not they end up as a ticket, one of the big questions lingering.

One of Mrs. Clinton’s chief strategists, Howard Wolfson, hinted that she was not inclined to carry the battle to the convention.

“Our focus is on securing the nomination for ourselves in the near term,” he said. “I don’t think anybody is looking toward the convention to end this process.”

While there are sore feelings on both sides, Mr. Obama has directed his aides to begin reaching out to their counterparts in the Clinton camp.

Mr. Obama’s advisers said he would make no formal statement of victory, with the assumption that the moment would be elaborately marked by the media.

At least a dozen uncommitted delegates are viewed by both camps as almost certain to side with Mr. Obama once the primary season ends. But there are dozens of uncommitted superdelegates who resisted endorsements for reasons that are personal, political and pragmatic — ranging from a fear of alienating contributors to reluctance among lawmakers from relatively conservative districts to be identified with either Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton.