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On the Fence and in the Spotlight
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But her views would shift many times. After the New Hampshire primary, the campaigns started wooing superdelegates. Mizeur collected voice mails from Hillary Clinton, her daughter and her campaign chairman, McAuliffe.
"I started to become a little paralyzed about how to return those calls," Mizeur said. "When do you call a major presidential candidate and not interrupt them while they're having debate prep or at a major fundraiser or at a campaign rally? And what do you say?
"But then they kept calling again and again."
One day, she called Chelsea and asked whether it would be okay to return her mother's calls.
"My mom really wants to talk to you," Mizeur recalled Chelsea saying. "Call her anytime. She doesn't give out her cellphone to many people, and when she does, she wants you to call her back."
Mizeur returned the calls. Hillary Clinton invited her to chat backstage before a Feb. 10 rally at Bowie State University. Although Mizeur promised to stay uncommitted as a superdelegate, she decided to cast her ballot for Clinton in the Maryland primary. But she never made it to the polls.
"I was stuck in Annapolis in the ice storm," Mizeur said. "It was the first election I've ever missed in my entire life."
The Pressure Increases
In the months that followed, the campaigns ratcheted up their pressure on Mizeur. The media focused on superdelegates as decisive in the deadlocked race, and CNN's Anderson Cooper, radio talk show host Diane Rehm and others called Mizeur asking her to go on the air. Mizeur turned them down.
On April 21, Obama called. He was traveling between events in Indiana and had been trying to beat back questions about why he couldn't close the deal.
Obama sounded testy, Mizeur said. "It's time to stand and be counted like the rest of the nation that's behind me," she remembered him saying. "He said this thing needed to be wrapped up now because it was getting too negative."
Unlike Clinton, who had been warm and chatty, Obama was detached and businesslike, she said.
Later that month, Mizeur got a voice mail from an unusual Obama surrogate: Melissa Etheridge. The rock singer said she felt "a little like a telemarketer."
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