Obama troops undeterred by Clinton

by MAX PIZARRO
PoliticsNJ.com

A ceremony for the 2008 Presidential candidacy of Sen. Hillary Clinton in Elizabeth drummed up buko backing in New Jersey on Monday, but supporters of Sen. Barack Obama continue to organize on the ground -- and work for the endorsements from public officials who so far, at least publicly, remain coy about their presidential picks.

Riding a surge of rock star popularity natonwide, Obama limps far behind Clinton in the polls - 40-19 in New Jersey, according to Quinnipiac University.

But Newark City Councilman Ronald Rice Jr., whose unofficial role in the burgeoning Obama campaign is to serve as a liasion between the grassroots movement for Obama and elected officials, says the ground remains fertile for the freshman Illinois senator to come from behind with less than a year to go before the Democratic Primary here.

Rice says he noticed a lot of poltiical figures were absent from the steps of Elizabeth City Hall yesterday when Gov. Jon Corzine and others threw their support behind Clinton.

"It's not what you see on the Republican side, where almost everyone is endorsing (former New York City Mayor) Rudy Giuliani," says Rice. "There are important Democrats who weren't represented there, including Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Sen. Robert Menendez, the mayors of New Jersey's biggest cities (namely Cory Booker and Jerramiah Healy, who both support Obama), and much of the rest of the New Jersey Congressional delegation."

The Newark councilman, who says he supported Vermont Gov. Howard Dean in the 2004 Democratic Primary, remembers when then-Gov. James McGreevey backed Dean early, bringing almost every elected official along with him, a circumstance that in Rice's view dampened the grassroots movement for Dean. It ended up not mattering much, as Dean's candidacy was dead before the New Jersey Primary.

But Rice says what happened then was instructive, as he now sees an opportunity for Obama, unfettered by a ceremonial coronation - to move forward here on the grassroots level, to transmit a sense of urgency to voters for the battle ahead, as well as play the suitor to uncommited politicians.

"It's going to be about who has the best army on the ground to get the vote out," says Rice. "Right now, this is not even half of what you'd consider the power leaders of the state who are supporting Hillary. I think if you'd look at this list compared to the list of Democratic poltiicians who got behind Dean in 2004 with McGreevey, that group in '04 would outnumber this one, 2-1."