Washington delegation misses TV roll call, but votes Obama

DENVER -- Washington state Democrats on Wednesday divided ranks between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on an official, roll call paper ballot before joining the Democratic convention to award the presidential nomination to Obama by acclamation.

The state's 97-member delegation cast 68 votes for Obama and 26 votes for Clinton in an off-camera tally that took place before Clinton dramatically summoned the convention from within the New York delegation to unanimously nominate Obama.

Three members of the Washington delegation did not attend the convention session and did not vote -- Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, early supporters of Clinton, and former House Speaker Tom Foley. However, Murray signed Obama's nomination papers on Monday.

Clinton, the former first lady and second-term senator from New York, surrendered her historic bid to become the first female president to the first African-American candidate to win a major political party. Political parties traditionally call for votes by acclamation to showcase party unity behind a nominee heading into the fractious fall campaign.

The televised state-by-state roll call vote never reached states deep in the alphabet, such as Washington.

The choreographed count saw Obama's home state of Illinois yield the floor to Clinton's home state of New York. Clinton then stepped to the microphone to call for a vote by acclamation. The roll call tally at that point had given Obama 1,549 votes and Clinton 341 votes.

Moments earlier, the state of New Hampshire set the stage for symbolic unity by awarding all 30 delegate votes to Obama even though Clinton had staged a comeback in the first-in-the-nation primary to rebound from Obama's earlier victory in the Iowa caucuses.

Former Washington Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt said his entire delegation of Clinton delegates remained loyal to the candidate they were elected to support in the Feb. 9 caucuses.

Unpledged delegate Victor Collymore, a physician from Bellevue, who caucused with Clinton delegates Monday, voted for Obama in the end, as did 14 so-called "superdelegates," including Gov. Chris Gregoire, an early supporter of Obama.

"I feel relieved and happy," Berendt said. "We wanted to honor Hillary and her historic campaign. We owed her our vote."

Some Clinton delegates had been moved to tears by Clinton's call for a vote by acclamation, Berendt said.

Clinton loyalists will "all roll up their sleeves and work for Obama" in the contest Nov. 4 against Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Berendt said.

The former longtime state party chairman expressed disappointment that Gregoire had lost her chance to announce Washington's vote on nationwide television because the vote by acclamation came before Washington's turn in the alphabet.

"We lost some face time on the national stage," Berendt lamented. "I don't hold that against Obama. It was a procedural faux pas. There's not any bitterness here."

Mike Finkle, an assistant city attorney supervisor in the Seattle City Attorney's Office, backed Clinton to the end despite entreaties from Obama supporters to cross over to show unity.

"It has to do with my definition of unity and my personal path to achieving it," Finkle said. He vowed to vote for Obama in November.

A total of 11 Clinton delegates, including Finkle, had described their plans to stay loyal during the delegation's first breakfast at the convention on Monday.

Clinton will now become "the highly respected dean of our party somewhat like Ted Kennedy," Finkle said. "She will always be respected as a former presidential candidate and a senator, not just as a first lady."

The televised roll call reflected high-level negotiations between the Obama and Clinton campaigns and several days of events designed to gradually forge unity, culminating with Clinton's direct personal request to her pledged delegates Wednesday afternoon to shift allegiance to Obama. Clinton "released" her delegates to vote for Obama, without instructing them to do so.

Helen Howell, the Seattle attorney leading Washington state Obama delegates, said Obama's nomination by acclamation was "icing on the cake" after Clin- ton had done all that she could during the convention to bring her loyalists into the Obama camp.

"I was listening for every word (in Clinton's speeches) and there were a lot of people listening to every word," said Howell, who has been a full time volunteer for Obama for 15 months. "She said more than she needed to say."

Howell said that she understood Clinton delegates' loyalty to their candidate and their desire to vote for the candidate they were elected to support in the state's caucuses, when the Obama-Clinton struggle was just beginning.

"They felt they needed to do the job they were elected to do," Howell said. "I fully understand that people felt differently."

But Howell said she was confident that Clinton supporters would work to help Obama carry Washington state in November. "I know they'll be with us all the way," Howell said.

Four statewide polls conducted in Washington since late July show Obama leading McCain by an average of 10.5 percentage points in a state that has voted Democratic in the last five presidential elections.

Yet a new nationwide CNN poll completed Sunday showed that Obama may have trouble enlisting former Clinton supporters.

The survey found that 27 percent of Clinton's primary voters said they would vote for McCain rather than for Obama. That represented an increase from the 16 percent of Clinton voters who said in June that they would bolt to support McCain.