E-mail a friendHarold Ickes
airdate June 2, 2008
A member of the DNC Rules Committee, Harold Ickes is a veteran party operative, who's worked on several political campaigns. He served as Deputy Chief of Staff in the Clinton White House and went on to run Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign. He's also a longtime activist. He spent two summers in the '60s registering Black voters in Mississippi and Louisiana and was active in the anti-Vietnam War movement. Ickes is a graduate of Columbia Law School and runs the Washington office of a prominent law firm.
Advisor to Sen. Clinton discusses the positions of both Democratic candidates on the Florida and Michigan controversy, initially and today (2:11)
Full Interview (10:29)
Harold Ickes
Tavis: Harold Ickes served as deputy chief of staff under President Bill Clinton and is now working on behalf of Hillary Clinton and her bid for the White House. On Saturday, in his role as a member of the DNC's rules and bylaws committee, he participated in the meeting - the meeting - that decided the fate of delegates from Michigan and Florida. He joins us tonight from Washington. Mr. Ickes, first of all, thank you for your time, sir.
Harold Ickes: Nice to be here, and thank you for having me.
Tavis: Glad to have you on. For those who might not have been glued to a television on Saturday because they had other things to do with family or kids or commitments but know about, of course, this dispute where Florida and Michigan are concerned, as you see it, tell me what happened Saturday and then tell me what you make of what happened on Saturday.
Ickes: Well, what happened, Tavis, on Saturday was two things, or three things. Number one, the rules and bylaws committee, which had taken away all of the delegates from Michigan and Florida last year because they had gone ahead of the date that they should have gone ahead of, which was in early February - and we wanted to send a very powerful signal to other states that they ran the risk of losing their delegations if they went ahead of the window - we decided to seat the delegates from Florida and Michigan.
That was something that Mrs. Clinton had agitated for and worked on behalf of. Unfortunately, they only got a half a vote for each one of their delegates, but the important thing is that the people of - the voters of Michigan and Florida will now be represented at our convention, which was a big deal.
Two, they will be able to participate in the actual decision making about who our nominee should be in November - that's also a big and very positive deal. What we strenuously disagreed with was the fact that the rules and bylaws committee, in violation of our party's charter, which is analogous to the Constitution, decided to take away four delegates from Hillary Clinton and give them to Barack Obama.
In addition, Barack Obama had voluntarily taken his name off of the Michigan ballot in January, was not on the ballot, did not receive any votes. There was a big effort to organize an uncommitted vote in Michigan, it was successful - 238,000 people voted for uncommitted, and 55 delegates were elected for the uncommitted spot, compared to 73 for Hillary Clinton.
We said look, that's what should happen. Status quo should stay where it is. If people want to go, if Barack Obama wants to go to those 55 uncommitted, many of them would come over to him, we are confident of that. But you can't take delegates from a presidential candidate and give them to another, and that's exactly what that committee did, and we think it's an illegal violation of the charter and we're very unhappy about it.
Tavis: Illegal is a strong word. It's one thing to say it violates the charter, but you said, as I heard, that it violates the charter and it is illegal. What, then, is the course of action at this point?
Ickes: Well, it is illegal - your point's well taken. Let me say I consider it illegal under our party's charter because it violates the party's charter. It doesn't violate the state statute.
The course of action is either to - I said at the meeting that Mrs. Clinton had instructed me to reserve her right to appeal this decision of taking four delegates away from her and giving them to Obama, and of taking 55 delegates away from the president candidate known as uncommitted and giving them to Obama, and that we were reserving our right to appeal that to the full credentials committee, which is a subcommittee of the convention itself. She has not decided what she's going to do in that regard as of this interview.
Tavis: What's your sense, Harold Ickes, of when that decision will be made, given that tomorrow is the last day - Tuesday, June 3rd, the last day of primary balloting in this Democratic race?
Ickes: I think it will be made in this week, and maybe within the next day or so.
Tavis: For those watching who might be wondering what difference it would make, I hear the first difference it would make, which is - your argument is that it's the way the process ought to be done. It's a violation of the rules. I get that. That's important, but beyond the principle of standing by and adhering to the rules, what impact would it have, if any, on the outcome of this race?
Ickes: Well, this race is not decided yet. It is still possible for Hillary Clinton to get the nomination. It is our view that by midnight tomorrow night, when both the last two states, South Dakota and Montana, have finished voting, neither Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will have the 2,118 votes needed for the nomination.
And if that is the case, which we think it will be, the remaining group of 200 or 205 superdelegates, uncommitted superdelegates, will decide the nomination. And we're continuing to make our case, so, you know, I think that we're going to wait to see how tomorrow turns out, see how the next day or so turns out, and Mrs. Clinton will probably make her decision in that context.
Tavis: How much of her decision will ride on this notion of party unity, or the lack thereof, that people keep raising?
Ickes: We are all for party unity, Tavis, but we were sort of dumbstruck when the Obama campaign, its first proposal to us on Michigan was that we should split the delegation 50-50, giving delegates to Obama which he had not earned because he withdrew his name from the ballot, and taking nine delegates from Hillary Clinton. They wanted to take nine delegates from Hillary Clinton.
They ended up taking four. We do not think that taking four delegates or nine delegates, or whatever it is, is a sign of wanting to have party unity. And what makes this a sharper point, Tavis, is that as you know, we ended up giving four - or one half-vote to each delegate in Michigan. So the four delegates they took from Hillary ends up to be two delegate votes.
What a slap in the face. That is no olive branch in any way, shape or form. That's not the way to start down the path of party unity.
Tavis: For those who've not been following the story, Harold Ickes, nearly as close as you have, and you're obviously much closer than I am, but let me go back to the very beginning. What was, to the best of your recollection, the Clinton position and the Obama position when the party decided that they were in fact going to punish Michigan and Florida?
We know what happened now, thanks to your sharing it, over the weekend, but at the very beginning when they violated the rules and they had to be punished, what was the Obama position then, what was the Clinton position then, and how has that changed?
Ickes: Well, I don't know if there was an Obama or Clinton position. I'm a member of the rules and bylaws committee, and I can tell you that both Obama and Clinton supporters voted unanimously to punish those states. But we did that, Tavis, in the context of that they had violated the window. A lot of us feel that the process starts too early, a lot of us feel it is way too front-loaded.
And there was a rush of states, as you know, to come up early. And so we wanted to send a very unambiguous, strong message to states. If you break the window, if you come before February 5th, you're going to be hit -
Tavis: But doesn't last Saturday's resolution, no matter what side of this you were on, Harold, doesn't last Saturday's meeting, in and of itself, let alone the outcome, the resolution, do exactly what you intended not to do, which is to make an unambiguous statement? You've now backed off what you said months ago.
Ickes: No, no, no, no. We made our statement before other states moved, and that statement was heard and was adhered to, Tavis. Now, another state broke the window. So we are a practical political organization. Our job is to elect the president of the United States.
We say that the step that we took deterred the other states. Now we have to look at November and do our best to make sure that we can win both Florida and Michigan. Tavis, we can't win 270 electoral votes without Michigan. That's almost a hard fact.
So we don't want to give any opening to the Republicans. John McCain is not your standard-issue Republican. He will have a strong base in Michigan, and we need to send a powerful signal to Michigan that we need them and want them.
Tavis: How far can Hillary Clinton push this and not be viewed as being a spoiler? Not be viewed as being bitter, not be viewed as being just out of control by those who are critics of hers? How far can she push this?
Ickes: Well, if this means by a possible challenge, as I said earlier, I think that - I'm confident that Mrs. Clinton is going to be waiting to see how tomorrow night rolls out and see what the next day or so brings before making any decision on this, Tavis.
Tavis: What's your sense, Harold - last question here - what's your sense of however this thing turns out, how history is going - I was just watching this TV show "Recount" the other night on HBO. What's your sense on this side of history of how history is going to regard this historic race, given that we have some sense of how this thing's going to turn out?
Ickes: I think this has been an extraordinary year. I came into political - my political career started when I was working for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in Mississippi in 1964. I ran a core project in Louisiana in 1965, got beaten up, lost a kidney. If anybody had told me then that we would have an extraordinarily qualified woman candidate and an extraordinarily qualified, strong, powerful voice African American, people would have laughed at you then.
This has been a great year. We Democrats should be proud that we are able to feel such two strong candidates, and that we understand that one of them is going to be the next president of the United States.
I hope it's Hillary Clinton; I think she's the strongest one. I'm not saying that Mr. Obama cannot win. But we Democrats and the country should be very proud of this Democratic nominating contest, and we will look back on it as a really historic race.
Tavis: Harold Ickes, longtime Democratic strategist and activist, and of course White House adviser to President Clinton and now working alongside Hillary Clinton. Harold Ickes, thanks for your insight and for your time, as always.
Ickes: Thank you, great to be here.
Tavis: My pleasure.
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