WASHINGTON — Harold Ickes, a top adviser to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign who voted for Democratic Party rules that stripped Michigan and Florida of their delegates, is arguing against the very penalty he helped pass.
In a conference call Saturday, the longtime Democratic Party member contended that the DNC should reconsider its tough sanctions on the states, which held early contests in violation of party rules. He said millions of voters in Michigan and Florida would be disenfranchised but then acknowledged he had favored the sanctions.
Campaigning in Wisconsin, Clinton agreed that a suitable arrangement could be worked out to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations.
“The rules provide for a vote at the convention to seat contested delegations,” she said. “This goes back to the 1940s in my memory. There is nothing unusual about this. My husband didn’t wrap up the nomination until June. Usually it takes awhile to sort all this out. That’s why there are rules. If there are contested delegations, the convention votes on it.”
Ickes explained that his different position essentially is due to the different hats he wears as both a DNC member and a Clinton adviser in charge of delegate counting. Clinton won the primary vote in Michigan and Florida, and now she wants those votes to count.
“There’s been no change,” Ickes said. “I was not acting as an agent of Mrs. Clinton. We had promulgated rules, and those rules said the timing provision . . . provides for certain sanctions, automatic sanctions as a matter of fact, if a state such as Michigan or Florida violates those timing provisions.
“With respect to the stripping, I voted as a member of the Democratic National Committee. Those were our rules, and I felt I had an obligation to enforce them,” he said.
Clinton won after all the Democratic candidates agreed not to campaign in either state because they violated the party rules. In Michigan, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois had removed his name from the ballot, while Clinton left hers on.
Clinton, who flew into Florida on primary eve but did not hold a public rally, tried to argue that Obama had violated the pledge by airing a national ad campaign that also showed on Florida television stations.
Ickes’ dual positions on the issue illustrate some of the internal division within the party as Clinton and Obama run neck-in-neck in the Democratic presidential race.
Some Democratic leaders have expressed concern that the tight contest might ultimately hinge on the positions of about 700 party insiders known as superdelegates. Civil-rights leaders also have been somewhat split on whether failing to seat the Florida and Michigan delegates would unfairly disenfranchise minority voters.
As of Saturday, the delegate count stood at 1,280 for Obama and 1,218 for Clinton. If the DNC were to award Michigan and Florida’s 313 delegates based on the vote in their primaries, she would be ahead because she won both states.
On Saturday, Ickes reiterated the campaign’s view that new “redo” votes in Florida and Michigan aren’t necessary. He said many superdelegates are elected lawmakers or governors who are supposed to exercise their independent judgment to vote contrary to public opinion if they think another candidate has a better chance of winning.
Ickes expressed confidence that DNC chairman Howard Dean will work out a solution to Michigan and Florida’s stripped delegates and that there will be no delegate fight at the Democratic National Convention, predicting that Clinton will have the nomination locked up shortly after primaries and caucuses end June 7.
