Hillary Clinton’s campaign intends to lure pledged delegates from Barack Obama if she feels she needs them to win the nomination come convention time in August, The Politico reported Tuesday.

The strategy was confirmed to Politico by a “high-ranking Clinton official,” and represents the most recent tactic from the campaign to compensate for the New York senator’s shortfall in pledged delegates, which are awarded through the results of primaries and caucuses.

The campaign already has said it will win over a majority of “superdelegates” — the 795 party officials and insiders who attend the national convention uncommitted to either candidate.

But in going after Obama’s pledged delegates, Clinton would be asking them to go against their signed — but not mandatory — pledge to support the Illinois senator, Politico reported.

“All the rules will be going out the window,” a senior Clinton official told Politico.

Clinton’s campaign denied the report, issuing a statement Tuesday saying, “We have not, are not and will not pursue the pledged delegates of Barack Obama. It’s now time for the Obama campaign to be clear about their intentions.”

The campaign was reacting in part to comments from the Obama camp, which had already protested Clinton’s superdelegate strategy, urging the uncommitted power brokers to “ratify” the decision of pledged delegates (and vote for Obama).

On Tuesday the Obama campaign blasted the pledged delegate strategy reported in Politico.

“As it becomes increasingly clear that Senator Clinton may not be able to secure the nomination by winning the support of actual voters, the Clinton campaign has once again floated a strategy that would essentially say that the preference of Democratic voters is a mere obstacle to their win-at-all-costs strategy,” Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said in a statement, which continued: “… this is the latest example that it’s time to turn the page on this type of politics that could severely harm our party’s chances to win the general election.”

The latest Associated Press tallies show Obama with 1,281 total delegates and Clinton with 1,218. A candidate needs 2,025 to win.

Click here to read the story about Clinton’s pledged delegates strategy in The Politico.

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 at 10:55 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.