• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

Both Obama and Clinton to Be Nominated at Convention

Posted on: Friday, 15 August 2008, 06:00 CDT

By Jill Lawrence

WASHINGTON -- Onetime rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton announced a detente Thursday: They will both be nominated for president at the Democratic National Convention this month in Denver.

The joint statement the pair issued about the largely ceremonial roll call gave no hint of the tensions that marked the long primary struggle, including Clinton's campaign debt and some loyalists who still say she should have won.

Obama clinched the nomination in June when he won the support of the more than 2,118 delegates needed.

The statement said Obama's campaign "encouraged" Clinton's name to be placed in nomination "as a show of unity and in recognition of the historic race she ran and the fact that she was the first woman to compete in all of our nation's primary contests."

Obama, the first black presumptive nominee of a major party, said a roll call including both of them will celebrate "this defining moment in our history and bring the party together."

Clinton said Democrats would emerge "with every voice heard and the party strongly united."

The announcement drew enthusiastic responses from Clinton fans.

"She is going to get her moment. She really earned this," said Taylor Marsh, a stalwart Clinton defender and promoter during the primary season on her blog, TaylorMarsh.com.

Vote Both, a group formed to push for Clinton for vice president, called the plan "a big win" for Obama and Clinton. "Obama showed that he is a leader who unites the Democratic Party," spokesman Sam Arora said in a statement. "He is giving former Clinton supporters more and more reasons to support him."

Clinton is slated to speak at the convention as the "headliner" on Tuesday night, Aug. 26, just before a keynote address by former Virginia governor and current Senate candidate Mark Warner. Obama spokesman Bill Burton said "we haven't worked out the mechanics" of when the roll call vote of the states will be held.

He suggested some Clinton delegates could switch to Obama in the roll call. "She's going to be encouraging her supporters to vote for Obama" at the convention, Burton said, adding that she's telling them that "right now."

It's not clear if any will listen. Allida Black of Arlington, Va., a Clinton delegate who put her heart, soul and retirement savings into the campaign, said she is sticking with Clinton even though it will be symbolic. "He'll win on the first ballot," she said of Obama, who clinched the nomination June 3.

Though there's no sign Obama is considering Clinton for vice president, Black, Marsh and others say they have not given up hope. Jill Iscol, a Clinton fundraiser, said Thursday that the party and the country would be "absolutely electrified" by an Obama-Clinton ticket.

"He needs to pick her to win," she told Shalom TV. (c) Copyright 2008 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.

Source: USA TODAY

More News in this Category