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Democrats Approve Deal on Michigan and Florida

A supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed disappointment after Democratic officials chose to give delegates from Florida and Michigan half-votes.Credit...Joshua Roberts/Getty Images

WASHINGTON — To jeers and boos that showcased deep party divisions, Democratic Party officials agreed Saturday to seat delegates from the disputed Florida and Michigan primaries at the party’s convention in August but give them only half a vote each, dealing a setback to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The agreement, reached by the rules committee of the Democratic National Committee behind closed doors and voted on publicly before a raucous audience of supporters of the two candidates, would give Mrs. Clinton a net gain of 24 delegates over Senator Barack Obama. But this fell far short of her hopes of winning the full votes of both delegations and moved the nomination further out of her reach.

She now lags behind Mr. Obama by about 176 delegates, according to The New York Times’s tally, in the final weekend of campaigning before the nominating contests end.

Mrs. Clinton, who led the voting in the Michigan and Florida contests, which were held in defiance of party rules, picked up 19 delegates more than Mr. Obama in Florida and 5 delegates more than Mr. Obama in Michigan.

The deal prompted one of her chief advisers, Harold Ickes, a member of the rules committee himself, to declare that Mrs. Clinton’s fight may not be over, even though Mr. Obama’s advisers say he is only days away from gaining enough delegates to claim the nomination.

“Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee,” Mr. Ickes said before the final vote, raising the specter of a fight until that committee meets. His words drew cheers from Clinton supporters, including many who yelled, “Denver! Denver! Denver!” — implying that the fight could go all the way to the convention in that city.

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Representative Robert Wexler of Florida spoke to the Democratic Party’s rules panel Saturday on behalf of the Obama campaign.Credit...Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Mr. Ickes said the outcome for Michigan was a hijacking of voters’ intent because it assigned delegates to Mr. Obama even though he did not win them as his name was not on the ballot.

Mrs. Clinton was in touch with Mr. Ickes throughout the day, aides said, and she instructed him to conclude his remarks with that message to the party. It remained an open question, though, how much leverage Mrs. Clinton would have after the primaries concluded on Tuesday.

The committee’s task was to resolve how to treat the delegates from Florida and Michigan, which had moved up their primaries earlier than the Feb. 5 date allowed by the party. Both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama had agreed at the time to the party’s decision to penalize the two states by disallowing their delegates, but that decision was challenged, leading to the meeting on Saturday.

The committee members found themselves in a surprising drama that riveted hundreds of spectators, reporters and party activists in the ballroom of the Marriott Wardman Park hotel, as well as television audiences who could watch the session live on several cable networks.

The scene at the hotel was a wrenching one for many committee members, who brought into the room their own candidate loyalties, even as they tried to reach for compromise.

They were frequently badgered by members of the audience, who had obtained tickets last week to witness the meeting. They represented the two candidates, and many mocked the few expressions of party unity.

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Kim Frederick shouted after Democratic party officials voted to seat Florida and Michigan delegates with half a vote each, saying the decision had handed the election to John McCain.Credit...Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

As the votes on the agreements were taken, one woman, wearing a blue “Team Hillary” shirt, shoved a man in a suit and tie wearing a small Obama button on his lapel. Another woman in a white Clinton shirt hung her head in her hands.

“That was a crime!” a man shouted.

“McCain in ’08! McCain in ’08!” a woman yelled from the back of the room. “No-bama! No-bama!”

The committee voted to restore the entire Florida delegation but give each delegate only half a vote, a penalty for moving up its primary and a warning to other states that might consider doing the same in 2012. The vote was 27 in favor and 1 abstention. The committee first turned back a motion, by a vote of 15 to 12, to seat the full delegation and give each delegate full voting rights.

The committee reached essentially the same decision about Michigan, voting 19 to 8 to seat all the delegates while giving each delegate only half a vote. But the decision seemed even more tortuous than that over Florida because of the bizarre circumstances of the primary.

Mrs. Clinton received 55 percent of the vote, but Mr. Obama’s name was not on the ballot and 40 percent of voters cast their ballots for “uncommitted.” The committee approved a plan giving Mrs. Clinton 69 delegates and Mr. Obama 59.

The deep wounds among Democratic partisans — and the unification challenges that lie ahead — were laid bare when the committee rendered its judgment around 7 p.m. Supporters of Mrs. Clinton jeered the decision.

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Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, presented his state’s case to the Rules and Bylaws Committee.Credit...Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

But Obama supporters said the Clinton camp was upset because the decision showed the nomination contest was essentially over. “There is no more big concentration of delegates from anywhere left,” said Allan Katz, a Florida lawyer and member of the rules committee who supports Mr. Obama.

“This was their last big chance to move the goal posts and it failed,” he said.

Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton who attended the meeting on Saturday, played down the rancor. He applauded the Florida decision, but sharply criticized the Michigan outcome.

“It will be incumbent upon both of these candidates to try to bring the party together and unify the party,” Mr. Wolfson said. “It’s like one of these days when we have two contests and he wins one and we win one. From a delegate perspective, we’re obviously better off than a month ago.”

The agreement was voted on after an intense five-hour debate, played out on live television. It was followed by about three hours behind closed doors after the rules committee retreated for lunch.

It started with hundreds of demonstrators chanting outside, until torrential rains drove them away. Inside were the 28 members of the rules committee, who sat under the lights at a U-shaped conference table.

Throughout the day, there were multiple outbursts from people in the room, which particularly flared when representatives from Florida made their arguments. The speaker for the Clinton campaign, State Senator Arthenia Joyner of Florida, asked the committee to allow a full vote for each of the state’s 211 disputed delegates.

“I want it all,” Ms. Joyner said. “Yes, I’m asking for a full vote.”

Representative Robert Wexler of Florida, who was speaking on behalf of the Obama campaign, suggested that each of those delegates receive a half-vote. Mr. Wexler called it an “extraordinary concession, in order to promote reconciliation with Florida’s voters.”

Mr. Wexler received the brunt of the anger from a few dozen supporters of Mrs. Clinton who were seated on the ballroom floor. When he outlined the proposal for Florida — a deal that would give Mrs. Clinton 19 delegates more than Mr. Obama — he was jeered for not saying whether he would support a proposal to fully seat the delegates.

“Answer the question!” several people shouted. “Yes or no? Yes or no?”

And tempers flared in the discussion over Michigan too, especially after the Obama campaign proposed splitting the state’s delegates evenly between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton.

At that point, Tina Flournoy, a Clinton adviser and member of the rules committee, said Mr. Obama’s proposal essentially called for overriding the will of the voters.

“What is being proposed here is that you go into a voting booth and at some point later down the road, someone decides that your vote is for someone else,” she said. “If we’re going to do that, let’s cancel 2012, and let’s divide all the delegates in all the states.”

The references to the will of the voters were a deliberate echo of the Florida recount in 2000. For weeks, Mrs. Clinton has been crusading for “every vote to count.” She even traveled to the epicenter of the recount debacle in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade Counties, where she likened her call for counting all votes to the abolitionist movement, the current election turmoil in Zimbabwe and various civil rights struggles.

Mrs. Clinton had hoped that the rules committee would uphold the elections in Florida and Michigan so as to confer legitimacy on their popular vote; if they were added to her national tally, she would lead Mr. Obama in the popular vote. Mrs. Clinton hoped that would stir the passions of the party’s superdelegates, who would then swing to her side and choose her as the party’s nominee.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, opened the meeting by urging party activists who filled the hotel ballroom to think beyond the immediate concerns of their chosen candidates and begin working for the benefit of the party in the general election.

“This is not about Barack Obama,” Mr. Dean said. “This is not about Hillary Clinton. This is about our country. This is about restoring America to its greatness, to restoring our moral authority and to healing America at home. That’s what this is about.”

A correction was made on 
June 8, 2008

A picture caption in some copies last Sunday with an article about the last days of the Democratic presidential race referred incorrectly to demonstrators, using information from Getty Images, who waited outside a meeting of the Democratic Party’s rules committee while the panel debated whether to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations. Some of the protesters shown were part of an organization, Florida Demands Representation; they were not all expressly supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

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