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The Clinton camp has relied primarily on Bayh and state party chairman Dan Parker to secure endorsements from legislators, mayors, and county chairs in an effort that has encompassed personal phone calls, dinner dates, and sometimes acrimonious arm-twisting. The covert organizing has miffed Obama supporters and impartial party leaders hoping that neutrality will mitigate post-primary fractures in the party.
Yet in recent weeks the work has paid off for Senator Clinton, who has even welcomed a rash of once-neutral leaders who are succumbing to private pressure in increasing numbers.
Parker began the recruitment effort for Clinton when Bayh announced his endorsement of her nine months after abandoning his own presidential ambitions in 2006. A month later, Parker had enlisted seventeen others, including the chairs of five of Indiana's nine Congressional districts and two other superdelegates (Parker himself is one).
"Behind the scenes it's been interesting," said Tim Southworth, the chair of Indiana's sixth Congressional district, who had remained neutral until yesterday. He received a call from Parker the week Bayh endorsed, but had withheld his support so that he could "hear both sides of the story." He acknowledged that party pressure since "played a part" in his decision to go public.
Southworth's but one official whose endorsement plans have changed recently and suddenly. Of the thirty county chairs and party officials that HPI interviewed for this story, seven who were once steadfastly neutral have since endorsed Clinton. None have endorsed Obama.
John Bonecutter, the Clinton County chairman, last month expressed bewilderment at the endorsements of other officials. "I don't know why they would do that before the primary," he said. "I wouldn't want to favor one or the other in my position. I would not presume to endorse in a public forum of any kind." Yesterday, Bonecutter endorsed Clinton.
"If you endorse somebody, then you're saying, 'This is my candidate, and we're not even going to work for you,'" said Sandra Tyler, chair of the Fulton County Democratic Party. "I don't think that's the way it should be. We never have endorsed and it's been my policy for the last eight years that we do not endorse anybody in the primary. Everybody has a chance . . . [Otherwise] that's basically closing the door to the other candidate." Tyler, too, has since endorsed Hillary Clinton.
The other capricious chairs have acknowledged the pressure they've come under. "[The state party] is supporting Hillary," formerly neutral Clay County Chairman Joseph Broyles said, adding at the time, "I feel that pressure."
Bayh has implicitly cast his conversations in personal terms, arguing-without-arguing that Clinton's nomination could earn him the Vice Presidential nomination. "There's been the message sent out that Bayh is on the shortlist if Hillary wins," Mike Adkins, the chair of the Hancock Democratic Party said. And as the de facto leader of the Indiana Democratic Party, Bayh's circle—with Parker in the lead on the ground—controls the purse strings of the party accounts that vulnerable mayors and legislators (of which there are many) perennially count on for re-election in increasingly expensive contests. Adkins characterized Clinton's Indiana operation as "top-bottom," Obama's as "bottom-up."
The pressure generated by Bayh, in particular, has weighed heaviest on the chairs of Indiana's largest counties, whose support he sought first and most aggressively. One chair was invited by Clinton to lunch with Senator Bayh and Chairman Parker. Later Bayh and second district chairman Butch Morgan held a meeting with the district's chairs on behalf of the Clintons.
"I know that the state party seems to be lining up behind Mrs. Clinton," said Shari Mellin, who attended the meeting and is chairwoman of the Elkhart Democratic Party. "We've definitely been asked to formally support Mrs. Clinton . . . I do think it's a mistake to make an endorsement like that. What are they going to do if Hillary doesn't win Indiana? If Barack Obama wins, that would be an awkward situation. I just think it's a mistake to endorse when you have two good candidates running," she said. Mellin adds that there were no "strong arm tactics," but expressed surprise when Parker toured with former President Clinton around Indiana. Yesterday Parker accompanied Bayh Chief of Staff Tom Sugar to a campaign rally with Clinton in Kokomo.
Parker himself has long ago abandoned any pretense of neutrality, using his official position as chair to disseminate Clinton talking points to media outlets, adopting the Clintonian lingo for superdelegates—"automatic delegates"—in a March interview with the South Bend Tribune and later telling Jim Shella on Indiana Week in Review that Clinton's prolonged campaign only benefited the party.
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Parker and the other chairs are careful to note that their endorsements are "personal," and don't officially constitute an endorsement of the organization they represent. But few party officials not working in state headquarters believe it. "I know that the state party wants to deliver votes for Hillary," said Henry County Chair Steve Clark, who fears that the leadership's activist role could deepen divisions within the party "if they make such a hard push."
"I don't feel like I can endorse as a regular voter, because I'm the county chair, and people know that," said Elkhart Chair Mellin. "If they say Shari Mellin is for Obama, and even if I say, 'This is not the party's endorsement; it's a personal endorsement,' let's face it, who cares if it's my personal endorsement? The reason they look to me at all is because I'm the county chair."
Every other chair HPI spoke to echoed the same concerns, fearing party squabbling in a primary would tip the party across a precipice of angry disaster in what has emerged as the most promising Democratic electoral year in decades. "I owe it to the Democrats to allow the candidates to have equal opportunities and equal access," said Boone County Chair Jim Whelan, who expressed optimism at the prospect of the "rebirth" of his county's party.
In Indiana, the Democratic primary appears to be as close as any before it and will certainly be closer than any after it. Yet dichotomously, Clinton has enjoyed near unanimous support from the party's pure-bred, luring four of the state's superdelegates almost immediately and leveraging Senator Bayh's influence to elicit a mind-numbing string of local endorsements. Despite this, Obama continues to keep Indiana within the margin of error in the latest Howey-Gauge poll of the state.
Now the optimism expressed by Whelan is waning, and officials like Newton County Chair Terri Pasierb say that damage to the party has already been done as feelings harden and the campaigns grow more personal.
The ninth district has become especially volatile. District Chairman Mike Jones sought permission to endorse Clinton from his district's county chairs at three organizational meetings in a row, getting rebuffed each time, according to Jefferson County Chair Jim Melton. Finally Jones endorsed yesterday anyway, departing on the same day from Baron Hill, the Congressman whose interests Jones is primarily tasked with looking after, who bucked Bayh to announce his endorsement of Obama.
Bayh fundraising flack Dean Boerste immediately began the retribution against Hill, distributing a mass email to party insiders that angrily accused Hill of "defying all political logic" and threatening "damage to Congressman Hill's reelection efforts." The message encouraged recipients to call Hill's office and express their "concerns of [Hill] making any endorsements," advising the Congressman to "stay focused on his reelection."
The question of neutrality has become important as Democrats grow increasingly weary of the prospect of a drawn-out nomination fight between Clinton and Obama. Obama's pledged delegate lead became nearly mathematically insurmountable for Clinton over two months ago, but still her campaign persists—and it persists amid sinking poll numbers for Obama, who has been unable to quell the controversy swelling around inflammatory sermons of the Senator's former pastor.
Continued doubts about Obama, combined with the meteoric rise of a ill-fated Clinton campaign, is perhaps the worst-case scenario for the Democratic Party, whose leaders will confront pressure to abandon Obama in the face of electability fears as well as pressure not to alienate the millions of new voters Obama has lured to the party.
Yet instead of uniting around Obama, who even Clinton supporters acknowledge is the overwhelming favorite for the nomination, the party continues only to further divide—a foreboding fact exhibited this morning by the stunning defection from Clinton of former Democratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew, as consummate a Hoosier Clinton and Bayh devotee as Parker.
Now Andrew is "convinced that the primary process has devolved to the point that it's now bad for the Democratic Party," and appeals to Democrats to "heal the rift in our party."
He does it—how else?—with an endorsement.
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