Continued: Dispute over delegates may determine nominee

WASHINGTON - The battle for the Democratic presidential nomination may hinge on whether party leaders reverse themselves and decide to seat 366 convention delegates chosen by Michigan and Florida in primaries that violated party rules.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., who won the popular vote in both contests, wants those delegates seated at the Denver nominating convention in August.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., opposes including the disputed delegates.

The stakes are high because the disputed delegates could decide the outcome of the tight race.

Clinton or Obama needs 2,025 delegates to win. The latest delegate count by CNN on Friday showed that Clinton had accumulated 1,033 delegates while Obama had 937. State-by-state polls showed the close race continuing in many of the 26 states that are holding primaries or caucuses by June 3.

The fight over the Michigan and Florida delegates began when national Democratic leaders disqualified the delegates from both states -- 9 percent of the 4,049 total -- after state officials ignored the party's official primary election timetable and moved their elections into January in hopes of exercising greater influence over selection of the nominees in the early rush of contests.

Michigan advanced its primary election from Feb. 26 to Jan. 15; Florida moved its primary from March to Jan. 29.

Clinton left her name on the ballot in Michigan while her rivals withdrew their names from the Michigan ballot and urged supporters to vote "uncommitted." Clinton ended up winning 55 percent of the popular vote while "uncommitted" drew 40 percent of the vote.

None of Michigan's delegates has been allocated.

In Florida, both candidates agreed to avoid campaign appearances and advertising, but Clinton supporters pressed turnout efforts on primary day after she announced that she would fight to have delegates from both states seated at the convention.

Clinton won the popular vote over Obama in Florida, 50 percent to 33 percent. None of Florida's delegates has been allocated.

The Democratic Party said the fate of the two states' delegations could be decided by the two states holding caucuses to choose approved delegations or by lodging appeals with the Democratic Party's convention credentials committee.

Democratic Party leaders hope the delegate dispute never reaches the credentials committee.

Party leaders have "always advocated that states submit plans in accordance with the rules -- and it's up to the states to determine what they do," Democratic party spokeswoman Karen Finney said.

If the final decision reaches the Democratic Party's convention credentials committee, the outcome could be decided by party insiders with close ties to the Clinton administration.

The three-member panel is led by Alexis Herman, a former White House official and secretary of labor during the presidency of Bill Clinton who led the Democratic Party Commission on Presidential Nomination Timing and Scheduling that helped set the primary timetable that Michigan and Florida ignored.

The panel also includes: James Roosevelt Jr., associate commissioner for retirement policy at the Social Security Administration during the Clinton Administration, and Eliseo Roques-Arroyo, a native of Puerto Rico who served as executive assistant to Rep. Antonio Colorado, D-Puerto Rico.

The panel will be expanded to a total of 186 members in late July, before the convention.

Senior Democratic Party officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed the hope that their party's nominee will be clearly known before the August convention, thus making the flap over the Florida and Michigan delegations a moot issue by then.

However, to pressure the two states to settle the dispute before then, these officials said that if the question comes before the credentials committee on the eve of the convention, the panel may not apportion the delegates according to the outcome of the popular vote in the two states' primaries.

Without discussing the delegate dispute, Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, told NY-1 television in an interview that Democrats could jeopardize chances of winning the White House in November if the Clinton-Obama stand-off continued into the convention.

"The idea that we can afford to have a big fight at the convention and then win the race in the next eight weeks, I think, is not a good scenario," Dean said.

He predicted that the race would be settled with a nominee known by April.

The stakes are all the greater because both Michigan and Florida are hotly contested battlegrounds in presidential elections and Democrats can't afford to alienate voters there.

Michigan voted Democratic in seven of the 15 presidential elections since World War II, including four since 1988. Florida voted Democratic in four of the 15 presidential elections -- most recently in 1996.

"You don't win Michigan in November by refusing to seat Michigan in August," Michigan Democratic chairman Mark Brewer told the Macomb Daily. "So somehow, this has got to be worked out."