Influential Democrats Waiting to Choose Sides

Democratic voters in Wyoming submit their ballots at a caucus site in Casper. With 22 out of 23 precincts reporting, Barack Obama was declared the winner. (By David Zalubowski -- Associated Press)

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (N.M.) said the decision to create the superdelegate category assumed they would use their own judgment. "If superdelegates were just intended to automatically vote for the preference someone else expressed, there wouldn't be any purpose," he said.

Don Bivens, the party chair in Arizona, said he feels a responsibility to help keep peace in the Democratic family and will wait before choosing sides, and then only after touching various bases within the party. But he added, "I do not feel bound by the popular vote; otherwise there would be no reason to have superdelegates, just to rubber-stamp" the outcomes of primaries and caucuses.

Key senators who remain uncommitted are especially torn. Sen. Ken Salazar (Colo.) noted that he entered the Senate in 2005 with Obama, and has shared numerous dinners and workouts at the congressional gym with him. As a moderate Democrat, he has also worked often with Clinton.

Sen. Herb Kohl (Wis.) said that he has a much deeper relationship with Clinton but that he counts Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, as a "dear" friend. Obama won Wisconsin in a landslide.

"The dynamics of a general election are very different from either a primary or a caucus," Salazar said. "The question will become, for my state -- and this will be my calculation -- how can I best deliver the nine electoral votes from Colorado to the nominee?"

Kohl added another criterion, which he called "perhaps the most important" one: Who would make the best president? "It's a judgment based on my knowledge of the two candidates," he said. "It's an intuitive thing, a feel thing, based on all the things that make Obama who he is and Hillary who she is. It's mysterious."

Salazar said waiting until after the primaries makes sense for the superdelegates, but he added that they should sort out the nomination long before the convention. "The sooner it gets resolved, the better," he said.

Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (Pa.) said that, as a moderate, he sees his role as helping to bring the party together. "The winner of this nomination will be the president," he said. "When you have that much at stake and you have two historic figures, it's going to be difficult to unify the party, and I think we're going to need people in the middle who can bring people together."

Dayton, Ohio, Mayor Rhine McLin decided to support Obama after he won her county in Tuesday's primary, following a courtship that included calls from Clinton, her husband, their daughter Chelsea and her campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, as well as from Obama and his wife, Michelle.

"I think that I made it clear I was supporting the way Dayton and Montgomery County went," McLin said Friday. Should neither candidate reach the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the nomination before the convention, she said, she hopes that her fellow superdelegates will look closely at who has received the most votes at that point. "I think that popular vote should weigh very heavily in this decision," she said.

When reached late last week, superdelegate Diane Glasser of Florida offered a seemingly surprising answer when asked what she had heard from the campaigns. "I have heard from a lot of reporters all over this country, but I haven't heard from either one of those camps," she said. "That's the truth. They may be taking me for granted. I'm a white, older woman. They may be assuming I'm obviously going one way. I've got neighbors, friends, family trying to convince me, but nobody from the campaigns."

She may not have long to wait. Because the Florida and Michigan delegations have been stripped of their right to be seated at the convention, the campaigns have avoided calling them. But as interest grows in finding a compromise that would allow both states' delegates to attend the convention, Glasser can expect the barrage soon.