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 Editorials | Issues | January 2008 
Is Obama a Plan B for Richardson Voters?
 John Harwood - The New York Times
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| | Barack Obama fired up thousands of supporters across Iowa on Wednesday, one day before the first of state-by-state votes to pick nominees for the 2008 White House race. (Scott Galindez/Truthout) |
Barack Obama's drive to win tonight's Iowa caucuses is getting a boost from two of his putative rivals. After earlier winning the support of Dennis Kucinich, Obama's campaign has reached an agreement with Bill Richardson for the second-choice votes of Richardson supporters in caucuses where the New Mexico governor can't clear the threshold for competition, according to a senior Obama campaign adviser. The adviser estimated that the deal puts Mr. Obama in position to claim support from roughly half of the 15 percent of Democratic caucus-goers expected to support second-tier candidates.
In return, the Obama adviser said, Obama forces will lend support to Mr. Richardson at caucuses where Mr. Obama turns out more backers than he needs to win any additional delegates. Mr. Richardson drew 6 percent of the vote in the most recent Des Moines Register Poll, trailing Mr. Obama's 32 percent, Hillary Clinton's 25 percent and John Edwards' 24 percent.
In a close race, such a deal could make an important difference. John Edwards' 2004 campaign credits a similar deal with Mr. Kucinich then as helping fuel his strong second place showing.
But the specter of backroom deal-making could also raise questions about Mr. Obama's stance as an opponent of traditional politics. The national spokesman for Mr. Obama's campaign, Bill Burton, said word of a deal "isn't true."
Update | 3:25 p.m. David Plouffe, Obama campaign manager, responding to the report that Mr. Obama had reached an agreement for reciprocal support with Bill Richardson's campaign, insisted the campaign had reached "no formal arrangements" with any of his rivals. But he said that "there are certainly places where our precinct captains want to work with Richardson" supporters - to gain second-choice support in cases where Mr. Richardson doesn't reach the threshold to compete, or to lend Mr. Richardson surplus backers in instances where they can't yield any additional Obama delegates.
"We're giving our precinct captains a lot of latitude to work this out," Mr. Plouffe said. "We're going to fight as hard as we can for every one" of Mr. Richardson's available supporters, and "It comes down to how well our precinct captains do." With polling showing that Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards are the top contenders for second-choice support, Mr. Plouffe said they'd made similar efforts with supporters of Joseph Biden and Chris Dodd as well. Dennis Kucinich has already publicly urged his backers to support Mr. Obama in precincts where Kucinich is not viable. |
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