The only successful Superdelegate Coup in this election cycle took place in 2015, long before a single vote was cast. Hillary’s campaign was able to amass commitments (publicly and privately) from more than 440 superdelegates out of 714 (61.6%) by late August 2015 more than five months before the Iowa Caucus.
Clinton Camp Says One-Fifth of Delegates Secured for Nomination
By Mark Halperin and Jennifer Epstein
August 28, 2015
The campaign says that Clinton currently has about 130 superdelegates publicly backing her, but a person familiar with recent conversations in Minneapolis said that officials are telling supporters and the undecided in the last few days that private commitments increase that number to more than 440—about 20 percent of the number of delegates she would need to secure the nomination.
“This is really about how you put the numbers together.”
~ Hillary Clinton
It certainly was how you put the numbers together, long before the voters get to weigh in. Most superdelegates are elected officials and party leaders.
Superdelegates
If you’re a Sanders supporter, you might think this seems profoundly unfair. And you’d be right: It’s profoundly unfair. Superdelegates were created in part to give Democratic party elites the opportunity to put their finger on the scale and prevent nominations like those of George McGovern in 1972 or Jimmy Carter in 1976, which displeased party insiders.
It might be that Hillary is just phenomenally popular with these party elites, or there may be some ulterior motives at work as we learned earlier this year.
How Hillary Clinton Bought the Loyalty of 33 State Democratic Parties
by MARGOT KIDDER
In August 2015, at the Democratic Party convention in Minneapolis, 33 democratic state parties made deals with the Hillary Clinton campaign and a joint fundraising entity called The Hillary Victory Fund. The deal allowed many of her core billionaire and inner circle individual donors to run the maximum amounts of money allowed through those state parties to the Hillary Victory Fund in New York and the DNC in Washington.
The idea was to increase how much one could personally donate to Hillary by taking advantage of the Supreme Court ruling 2014, McCutcheon v FEC, that knocked down a cap on aggregate limits as to how much a donor could give to a federal campaign in a year. It thus eliminated the ceiling on amounts spent by a single donor to a presidential candidate.
In other words, a single donor, by giving $10,000 a year to each signatory state could legally give an extra $330,000 a year for two years to the Hillary Victory Fund. For each donor, this raised their individual legal cap on the Presidential campaign to $660,000 if given in both 2015 and 2016. And to one million, three hundred and 20 thousand dollars if an equal amount were also donated in their spouse’s name.
From these large amounts of money being transferred from state coffers to the Hillary Victory Fund in Washington, the Clinton campaign got the first $2,700, the DNC was to get the next $33,400, and the remainder was to be split among the 33 signatory states. With this scheme, the Hillary Victory Fund raised over $26 million for the Clinton Campaign by the end of 2015.
The money was either transferred to the Hillary for America or Forward Hillary PACs and spent directly on the Hillary Clinton Campaign, often paying the salaries and expenses within those groups, or it was moved into the DNC or another Clinton PAC. Some of it was spent towards managing the Hillary merchandise store, where you can buy Hillary T shirts and hats and buttons.
The fund is administered by treasurer Elizabeth Jones, the Clinton Campaign’s chief operating officer. Ms. Jones has the exclusive right to decide when transfers of money to and from the Hillary Victory Fund would be made to the state parties.
One could reasonably infer that the tacit agreement between the signatories was that the state parties and the Hillary Clinton Campaign would act in unity and mutual support
And that the Super Delegates of these various partner states would either pledge loyalty to Clinton, or, at the least, not endorse Senator Sanders. Not only did Hillary’s multi-millionaire and billionaire supporters get to bypass individual campaign donation limits to state parties by using several state parties apparatus, but the Clinton campaign got the added bonus of buying that state’s Super Delegates with the promise of contributions to that Democratic organization’s re-election fund.
Could Superdelegates Really Stop Bernie Sanders?
But to be clear, the superdelegate process was designed so the party can stop candidates it determined to be unelectable. “The superdelegates were created to lead, not to follow,” wrote the late Geraldine Ferraro, a member of the Hunt Commission, back in 2008. “They were, and are, expected to determine what is best for our party and best for the country.”
From New Republic
Could Superdelegates Really Stop Bernie Sanders?
In truth, superdelegates are neither nefarious nor benign. But they are, by definition, a ripcord for party elites to attain control over the primary process. Their very existence creates unnecessary suspicion. Of course, asking the superdelegates to vote themselves out of existence is certainly a tall order. But this should have been done eight years ago. Party leaders already have enough power to affect outcomes; they don’t need another opportunity. Especially because, if they ever used it, the ripcord would in practice become a self-destruct button.
A “ripchord” to jettison the will of the voters.
The problem of superdelegates isn’t new. In 1984 when I was a full time unpaid volunteer with the Gary Hart Campaign the issue of superdelegates was even more contentious than it is in this election cycle.
Superdelegates came close to being decisive in the very first nominating contest after their creation. In 1984, they preferred Walter Mondale to Gary Hart, but Mondale ultimately won a plurality of delegates. So while superdelegates put him over the top, he was also the narrow choice of the voters. But the experience of 2008 was supposed to make superdelegates a thing of the past.
It’s time to reform the Democratic Party’s superdelegate system, and reform how the source of donor money is veiled from public view using the loopholes created by the 2014 McCutcheon v FEC decision.