Nevadans say party will be unified in run-up to election

DENVER -- Political conventions are supposed to be about the nominees.

But this Democratic National Convention keeps coming back to someone who's not going to be the nominee: Sen. Hillary Clinton.

To some supporters of Barack Obama, who will be nominated here Thursday, it's exasperating: Why can't Clinton and her supporters get out of the way? And to some of those Clinton supporters, it's infuriating that they're expected to.

But Nevada delegate Yvette Williams, an Obama supporter from the beginning, was not fazed.

"I think she's a wonderful woman," said Williams, a 50-year-old mortgage broker in Las Vegas. "She's opened doors and accomplished so much. She has busted open doors for my daughters. I'm just so excited about what America's going to look like in the next 10 years."

Like a lot of people, Williams used to believe that the political process is controlled by an insular group of insiders.

Now she is one.

Williams went to see Obama at the Clark County Government Center in February 2007. That led to volunteering for the still-nascent campaign, which at that time was a group of volunteers getting together at a Starbucks.

In July, the campaign picked her house for a visit by Obama himself. Supporters packed into the living room and kitchen, overwhelming the air-conditioning on a sweltering summer day.

Williams still has the water bottle Obama sipped from as he spoke that day, and when friends stay in her guest house, where Obama gave interviews to the media, she reminds them he once sat there.

"It just got me so inspired," she said. "I realized through the campaign that one person really can make a difference if each of us just step up and do what we can do."

She volunteered for the state Democratic Party in the run-up to the Jan. 19 caucuses, going from precinct captain to Assembly district leader, training other volunteers. "I recruited all of my family, my kids, my poor husband," she said, laughing.

Elected as a precinct delegate, then a county delegate, she cried as she gave her speech at the state convention in May, asking her fellow Democrats to send her to the national convention for all her hard work.

At that same convention, she ran successfully for the executive board of the party. Nevada Democratic Party Chairman Sam Lieberman recently appointed Williams, who is biracial, to chair a committee on party diversity.

So now Williams is one of those people on the inside, the ones who call the shots. "I've gone from this little volunteer to being in charge," she said.

It's people such as Williams that the Obama campaign is counting on to win Nevada, which has resisted Democrats' attempts to "turn it blue" in the past.

The state has voted Republican in every election since 1968, except for 1992 and 1996, when President Clinton carried the state with substantial help from third-party spoiler Ross Perot.

But the Obama campaign believes that this year Democrats are attracting people such as Williams, who never before got involved with the party or a campaign, in significant numbers. And these supporters are so enthusiastic -- "fired up," in Obama's phrase -- that they talk to their neighbors and activate their communities, a spontaneous grass-roots effort they don't think the Republicans can match.

Williams is one of those who sees the campaign as something Obama does not fully control, a movement that is for him but no longer only about him.

"When I got caught up in this movement, the energy it creates -- it transforms you," she said. "I am a better person because of this campaign."

Clinton won the Nevada caucuses on Jan. 19, but Obama ended up with more delegates to this week's national convention because of a delegate apportionment formula that favored his strength in rural and Northern Nevada and the fact that Clinton's campaign was running out of steam by the time of the state convention in May, where the national delegates were elected. Obama won 14 elected delegates to Clinton's 11.

"We are all unified now, our entire delegation," Williams insisted. "Nevada's been pretty divided, so for that to be achieved is significant."

On the convention floor, Williams said Obama and Clinton delegates were "dancing and cheering together."

Obama's Nevada campaign leader, state Sen. Steven Horsford, has seemed frustrated with the continuing Clinton focus at the convention, but in an interview Tuesday evening on the convention floor he kept it in check.

"It's not a problem," Horsford said. "My sense, being on this floor, is of the energy in this room, the enthusiasm of people willing to work together as one party to elect Barack Obama and defeat John McCain."

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., a formerly staunch Clinton supporter, is on board with Obama now, though she knows others still have a ways to go. But she predicted that the party would put the disunity talk behind it.

"The message is going to be, 'They came together, they unified the party and they're moving toward November strong,' " Berkley said.

Obama can and should win Nevada, she said.

"He has to reach out to the former Hillary supporters who are still on the fence, and I do not believe they will be when this is over," Berkley said. "I think we've got a winning combination. We've just got to get the message out."

Contact reporter Molly Ball at mball@reviewjournal.com.