By Marie Horrigan, CQ Staff
Whole story
Wed Jan 16, 2:38 AM ET
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton headed off a potentially embarrassing situation Tuesday when she won Michigan's Democratic presidential primary -- a contest, tarnished by a scheduling dispute between the national and state party organizations, in which she was the only top-tier Democratic candidate on the ballot.
Clinton ended up with 55 percent of the vote in the lightly attended Democratic contest, with 40 percent of the voters choosing the "uncommitted" line.
The peculiar contest resulted from the hard line taken by the Democratic National Committee against Michigan's rule-breaking Jan. 15 primary date, which ultimately led to the national party's revocation of all 156 of the state's delegates to the party's August national convention. The DNC's demand that most states, including Michigan, stick to a Feb. 5 starting date for the presidential nominating process prompted Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards -- Clinton's chief rivals for the nomination -- to withdraw their names from the ballot
1 comment:
I don't think the embarrasment is Clinton's. Though she had no right to declare any sort of victory after not campaigning and saying that Michigan should follow the DNC. In fact, had she removed her name as well, that might have been the straw to force the Michigan DNC to move their primary back to February.
No, the real embarrasment is Kucinich and Gavel, coming in so low as they did, even without real competition. Indeed, considering where Kucinich is, he should have just given up on following the DNC rules, and gone ahead and campaigned in Michigan. It was his one significant chance to make a real mark in the polls- and make a splash around the nation. Michiganders would have voted for him just for showing up.
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