Wed, May 07, 2008 - 5:58 PM

Tuesday’s big Obama victory in North Carolina still hasn’t moved superdelegate Muriel K. Offerman of Cary, N.C., into making a choice.

“I’m still uncommitted at this point, though I’m certainly paying attention to yesterday’s results,” said Offerman, 72, a deputy chairman of the state employment security commission.

Offerman, who initially was a backer of favorite-son candidate John Edwards, says she’s still not even leaning one way or the other.

Offerman said she did receive a telephone call Wednesday from the Obama campaign, which said “they would very much like me to no longer be uncommitted.”

But “my understanding is as of today it is not over – that there are a number of things happening. I’m hearing rumors,” says Offerman.

For instance, she said there is talk that top Clinton campaign advisor Terry McAuliffe was working hard to try to sway some declared Obama super delegates into switching their allegiances, which Offerman said is “a tough sell right now.”

There also is talk that something will be done with regard to some how counting Florida and Michigan, and she added, “we can’t write off Florida and Michigan.”

“I don’t think that will get her enough delegates, but it would help her with the popular vote (count),” said Offerman.

As for herself, Offerman says she does not particularly feel any pressure to do anything but to exercise her best judgment, despite the Obama’s resounding victory in her home state.

She still holds to what she’s been saying – that she will wait until the primaries are over.

“And there are a few more to come,” she says.

-- Billy House

State Del. Jennifer McClellan of Richmond, has turned on the woman she said "inspired her political career."

McClellan who sat with Hillary Clinton at a 1992 presidential debate at the University of Richmond and stood behind the former first lady through numerous primary losses, is now backing Barack Obama.

McClellan announced the flip in a conference call with another politician to whom she is indebted -- Gov. Tim Kaine.

The Virginia governor is a national co-chair for Obama's campaign. Two years ago he appointed McClellan, then a freshman state delegate, to a state commission on sexual violence.

The campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are aggressively lobbying uncommitted superdelegates today, cherry picking the most favorable trends from the North Carolina and Indiana primaries to argue for their candidate.

Several superdelegates from North Carolina remain unaligned with either candidate this morning, but at least one, Rep. Heath Shuler, said he's backing Clinton.

The deciding factor: though Obama won the state, his Western North Carolina district voted overwhelmingly for Clinton. Not much of a surprise there. Shuler’s district is populated with the sort of rural, blue-collar workers that Clinton courted so heavily this year.

At least two other uncommitted superdelegates are remaining mum, at least for now.

A spokesman for Rep. Bob Etheridge said he has no plans to endorse today.

Nor does Rep. Brad Miller. In interview, he seemed to suggest that his odds of ultimately backing Obama are higher than they were before Tuesday, given that Obama stretched his delegate lead last night.

“I’m going to let it settle out for a couple of days, look closely at the results in North Carolina and my district, see where the candidates are, and then make a decision on whether I should indicate my support,” he said.

Miller said his district -- with its mix of country, small towns and urban areas -- is generally representative of the state as a whole, which Obama won handily.

An overriding concern driving his decision, he said, was the future health of the party. Supporters of both candidates need to be convinced that the superdelegates selected the nominee fairly, he said.

At the end of the final primary June 3, if Clinton has whittled down Obama’s delegate lead to under 100 or so, Miller said he could envision voting for Clinton, if voters in his district showed a preference for her in last night’s election. But unless Clinton wins overwhelming victories – far out of line with previous Democratic primaries – that’s unlikely to happen.

“In four weeks, if Sen. Obama ends the contest with a 150- or 160-delegate lead and Sen. Clinton ends up as the nominee, Sen. Obama’s supporters will not think that it ended fairly. I think that will be a hard breach to heal,” he said.

--Sean Mussenden

A day after suffering a major drubbing in North Carolina and a narrower than expected victory in Indiana, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s staff revealed today that the candidate has loaned her campaign $6.4 million over the last month, including about a $1.5 million in the last few days.

Including the $5 million she loaned the campaign in January, Clinton has now dumped $11.4 million of her own money into her increasingly unlikely bid to overtake Barack Obama’s lead in the Democratic nomination fight.

On a conference call with reporters this morning, Howard Wolfson, the campaign’s communications director, said that the loans should be seen as sign of Clinton’s commitment to her campaign. When things looked down for Clinton in January, the $5 million loan helped spark a wave of new donations that helped her close the fundraising gap with Obama a bit. Her staff hopes for a repeat this time, to help rack up wins in the next six primaries.

But surely, the necessity of pumping even more of her own money into the campaign – at this point, more than the $10.5 million she made for her book “Living History” -- will also be seen as a sign of desperation.

There’s one irony worth noting. Clinton has emerged as the preferred candidate of low-to-middle income voters on the strength of her populist economic message. Her campaign likes to portray Obama as an elite candidate preferred by college-educated types – “eggheads” in the words of an anonymous Clinton advisor quoted in The Washington Post this morning.

But, of course, wealth is an important measure of the amorphous concept of eliteness, perhaps the most important measure. The Clintons and the Obamas are both millionaires, but the Clintons are worth far more than the Obamas, largely because of paid speeches Bill Clinton has given since leaving office. He has made nearly $52 million from speeches.

The loans she has made to her campaign represent a small fraction of the $109 million the couple has earned in the eight years since Bill Clinton left office. In fact, the money she has loaned her campaign dwarfs the Obamas’ income. The Obamas reported income of $4.2 million last year, up from just under $1 milllion in 2006.

--Sean Mussenden

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Chris Dodd has just lost his temper on the U.S. Senate floor amid anticipated efforts today by Florida senators and other Gulf Coast lawmakers to tack amendments concerning hurricane protection onto his national flood insurance program bill.

Florida Sens. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, and Mel Martinez, a Republican, and other lawmakers plan today and Thursday to seek to amend the bill today to add wind coverage or even a national catastrophic insurance fund.

But according to Hill sources, Dodd may have had a different target in mind with his floor remarks. Those sources said Republicans with energy industry ties are planning to try to amend the bill to allow drilling off Florida and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ease refinery permitting and take other coal- and oil-friendly measures.

“An awful lot of people are going to get hurt, and costs are going to go up!” bellowed Dodd, a Democrat from Connecticut, “because we can’t spend 24 hours here doing one thing – and that is deal with flood insurance!”

Dodd is chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee – which drafted the flood insurance renewal bill.

-- Billy House

So this is how the day after goes for those superdelegates. Every Wednesday it seems affords a new week of recalculating, but the numbers still aren’t there for either Clinton or Obama, which means, barring a drop-out, superdelegates are still the key to the Democratic nomination.

Virginia Del. Lionell Spruill of Chesapeake, an announced Clinton supporter, on his way to Washington to meet with the Clinton campaign said Tuesday’s results were “very interesting.”

He said he’s waiting until Montana and South Dakota primary elections June 3 before he makes any further decisions in the race. Still, “everybody and their momma’s” calling him, he said.

“The more I’m out of the press, the more they leave me alone,” Spruill said. “They see me in the press, they start calling and pressuring me.”

For now, Spruill said he’s waiting on Clinton to call the shots. “I don’t know what’s on her mind,” he said. “I guess we have to wait and see what will happen.”

-Neil H. Simon

WASHINGTON - Malfunctions on a state plane to Washington carrying Florida GOP Gov. Charlie Crist, often mentioned as a potential vice presidential running mate for John McCain, on Tuesday prompted the two pilots to turn the craft around and return to Tallahassee

The plane also was carrying three Crist staffers and a Florida Department of Law Enforcement officer to Washington, D.C..

"The pilots informed us during a middle of a briefing, and the governor kept us all working to keep our minds occupied," said Crist's spokeswoman, Erin Isaac.

About 45 minutes into the flight somewhere over Georgia, she said, pilots David Young and Jan Neilson detected three separate malfunctions, with mechanisms that control the tail and the steering, as well as the autopilot. The plane then returned to Tallahassee safely.

The governor turned to alternative transportation and is to appear today for several apppointments, including a lunch with NBC political analyst Timm Russert, and attend a dinner of a group of Florida business executives.

-- Billy House