Clinton Superdelegate Defects to Obama Camp

INDIANAPOLIS _ Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign suffered an embarrassing defection Thursday when former national Democratic Chairman Joe Andrew switched support to Sen. Barack Obama, warning other party leaders that the negative tone of the prolonged campaign is becoming a “catastrophe” that will help Republicans.

The announcement by Andrew, a former Indiana state Democratic chairman chosen by President Bill Clinton to head the national party in 1999, was aimed at urging voters in his home state as well as the party’s uncommitted superdelegates to rally around Obama and prevent further battling over the nomination that he said only helps the presumptive GOP nominee, Sen. John McCain.

“While I was hopeful that a long, contested primary season would invigorate our party, the polls show that the tone and temperature of the race is now hurting us,” Andrew wrote in a lengthy letter released by the Obama campaign.

“John McCain, without doing much of anything, is now competitive against both of our remaining candidates. We are doing his work for him and distracting Americans from the issues that really affect all of our lives,” Andrew wrote.

Andrew’s announcement came just days before his home state of Indiana, as well as North Carolina, hold the next round of presidential primary contests Tuesday.

The decision by the longtime loyalist of the Clintons, and a convention superdelegate, to abandon Hillary Clinton’s campaign makes Andrew a leading voice among top Democrats who have expressed fears that the longer the campaign continues, the more divisive it will become. They worry that backers of each candidate will grow more hardened in their support and less likely to vote for the other should they become the nominee.

“Should this race continue after Indiana and North Carolina, it will inevitably become more negative,” Andrew wrote. “The polls already show the supporters for both candidates becoming more strident in their positions and more locked into their support. Continuing on this path would be a catastrophe, as we would inadvertently end up doing Republicans work for them.”

Later, at a news conference, Andrew said Clinton’s support for a federal gas-tax holiday over the summer was symbolic of a poll-driven candidacy proposing something “politically expedient to give a quick pander to Hoosier voters,” in contrast to what he called the “principled” campaign Obama has run. Obama has labeled as a “gimmick” a summertime suspension of federal gas taxes, which McCain also supports, and said it would provide little relief to motorists and not wean the nation off of foreign oil.

Clinton’s campaign rejected Andrew’s contention that the continued battle was damaging the party.

“We just couldn’t disagree with that more, and more importantly voters couldn’t disagree with that more, given the fact that this process has attracted a record number of voters into the Democratic party primary process,” said Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson.

Clinton, meanwhile, called herself the “Goldilocks” of the presidential campaign and said her proposals, such as a gas-tax suspension, were “just right” for struggling middle-class families compared to those of Obama and McCain. She also implied that opponents of her plan, such as Obama, were elitists who did not understand the challenges facing voters.

“I find it, frankly, a little offensive that people who don’t have to worry about filling up their gas tank or what they buy when they go to the supermarket think that it’s somehow illegitimate to provide relief for the millions and millions of Americans who are on the brink of losing their job,” she told supporters in Brownsburg.

But in Columbia, Ind., Obama also worked to portray Clinton as poll-driven on the gas-tax issue.

“Unfortunately, after John McCain made the proposal, I guess Sen. Clinton thought it was going to poll well, so she said, `Me, too,’ ” Obama said. “Now it’s the McCain-Clinton proposal.”

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(Chicago Tribune correspondent Mike Dorning contributed to this report from Washington.)

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