Clinton voters buck Obama’s bid

CHICAGO | Sen. Barack Obama’s bid for party unity at the Democratic National Convention, which opens Monday, is being challenged by angry supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton who refuse to let heal wounds from a brutal primary fight that their candidate lost.

“You can actually feel this party splitting,” said Diane Mantouvalos, co-founder of Just Say No Deal coalition, an Internet-based collection of more than 250 groups vehemently opposed to the impending presidential nomination of Mr. Obama at the party convention in Denver. “There is a lot of anger out there.”

The renegade Democrats plan to stage protests outside the convention hall, flood the Internet with live blogs from Denver and air a TV ad challenging the legitimacy of the party’s nominating process. Miss Mantouvalos said her group is screening two anti-Obama documentary films in Denver this week, including “The Audacity of Democracy,” a play on the title of one of Mr. Obama’s autobiographical books.

Mr. Obama exacerbated the ill will Saturday by tapping Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware as his running mate, dashing Clinton supporters’ dreams that she would at least get the No. 2 spot on the ticket. The Obama team didn’t even ask Mrs. Clinton for the papers and records needed for the customary vetting process, a sign that she never was seriously considered despite Mr. Obama’s public words, Clinton aides said.

“It’s a total dis to Senator Clinton,” Miss Mantouvalos said. “It just speaks volumes about how Barack Obama doesn’t stand for anything.”

With polls showing as many as half of Mrs. Clinton’s voters up for grabs in the fall, Republican Sen. John McCain’s campaign sought to immediately seize on the opportunity by airing a TV ad Sunday quoting the former first lady’s criticisms of Mr. Obama during the primary campaign. The ad also features a voice-over announcer echoing Clinton supporter’s frustration about Mr. Obama’s vice-presidential pick: “She won millions of votes but isn’t on the ticket. Why? For speaking the truth.”

Clinton spokeswoman Kathleen Strand dismissed the ad, saying Mrs. Clinton’s “support of Barack Obama is clear. She has said repeatedly that Barack Obama and she share a commitment to changing the direction of the country, getting us out of Iraq and expanding access to health care. John McCain doesn’t. It’s interesting how those remarks didn’t make it into his ad.”

Will Bower, a registered Democrat in the District who co-founded an anti-Obama group called PUMA, nonetheless said he likely will vote for Mr. McCain.

“I feel that Obama has won a fraudulent campaign,” Mr. Bower said. “He’s done nothing. He’s great at speeches and that’s it.”

His misgivings about the senator from Illinois echo the primary campaign attacks by Mrs. Clinton, although the senator from New York has since recanted and embraced his nomination.

Mr. Bower isn’t alone. Polls taken over the last week show as many as one in five of the Clinton supporters now back Mr. McCain, and many more are up for grabs. A Zogby International poll showed about 25 percent of Democrats do not support Mr. Obama. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll taken Saturday and Sunday showed that 66 percent of Clinton voters now back Mr. Obama, with 27 percent supporting Mr. McCain.

The groups opposed to the Obama nomination did not identify any members who were convention delegates capable of affecting the outcome of the nomination vote. Some Clinton delegates aggressively pushed for the roll-call vote at the convention and expressed determination to vote for Mrs. Clinton, even if the outcome appears predetermined.

Penny Snow, a convention delegate from Portland, Maine, told the political news Web site Politickerme.com that she intended to cast her vote for Mrs. Clinton at the convention and would have a hard time voting for Mr. Obama in November.

Obama campaign officials said the disgruntled Clinton voters do not reflect the steady stream of her supporters joining the all-but-certain Democratic presidential nominee.

“It is a fairly emotional process that we are all going through at different rates,” said Dana Singiser, a former Clinton campaign adviser on outreach to female voters who now does that job for Mr. Obama.

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