Smoking in the back room: Dems near deal on seating Florida and Michigan

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FLA., MICHIGAN DEAL IS NEAR

By MAGGIE HABERMAN

May 28, 2008 -- The Democratic Party is eyeing a compromise plan to settle the divisive dispute over contested primaries in Florida and Michigan in which half the two states' delegates would be seated at the convention, sources said yesterday.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is making a major push to have the full delegations for both states - totaling 313 pledged delegates - seated at the party's Denver convention in August.

But the Democratic National Committee's rules-and-bylaws committee, which meets Saturday, is looking at a scenario where half of the delegations are counted, several party officials said.

"They want the delegates to be seated in some way, but they also want the two states to be punished for moving up their primaries" on the election calendar, said a party source.

Under the compromise scenario, it's still unclear how the delegates would be apportioned to Clinton and Barack Obama - especially since his name wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan.

Clinton has maintained it's important to have the full delegations allowed at the convention, but sources have said it's become clear she probably doesn't have enough votes on the 30-member committee for that to happen.

If Clinton got her wish, the number to clinch the nomination would be 2,210 instead of the current 2,026.

That's significant right now, since Obama is less than 50 delegates away from 2,026, and his team believes he can reach that mark with the final votes in Montana and South Dakota next Tuesday.

Obama supporters had argued it's unfair to him to do anything beyond a 50-50 split of the delegates in both Michigan and Florida, since both candidates signed a no-compete clause for both states.

But aware of the need to avoid alienating voters in both states, Obama's campaign has said it believes the delegations should be seated.

And Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, recently signaled his campaign is open to something other than 50-50.

maggie.haberman@nypost.com

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