delegates

Republican presidential candidate John McCain will file a slate of delegate candidates today that represents huge representation from supporters of his vanquished rivals – there are more Rudy Giuliani supporters on the ticket than early McCain backers, and the list includes some Mitt Romney backers.  None of Mike Huckabee’s state campaign leaders are running as McCain delegates, and retiring Rep. Jim Saxton, who backed Duncan Hunter, was not offered a delegate slot.

There was a fairly fierce internal battle over delegates in District 12, where State Senator Jennifer Beck and former Senate President John Bennett -- both originally Giuliani supporters – were both in competition for one Monmouth County slot.  Adam Puharic, the Monmouth GOP Chairman, picked Bennett, designating Beck for an alternate slot.

The McCain delegates:

It’s almost a week after the primary in New Jersey, and the Democratic State Committee knows how many delegates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will get.

But it’s not clear exactly who those delegates will be, except for the 20 “superdelegates” who automatically get to go to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

The Democratic State Committee released its unofficial delegate numbers today.

Of the 107 total pledged delegates, Hillary Clinton will get 59 to Barack Obama’s 48.

For Clinton, that includes 38 of the pledged district delegates who were on the ballot yesterday and 21 of the at-large delegates and local officials. Obama got 32 of the pledged district delegates and 16 of the at-large delegates.

Clinton gets 13 of the 20 super delegates, while Obama gets only one. Four super delegates have not yet declared, while two others have not yet been selected.

It’s unclear exactly which delegates that were on the ballot get to go to the Democratic National Convention in Denver come August.

The Republican delegate apportionment system is winner-take-all, although voters won't technically select delegates until the June primary.

The Inside Edge is always happy to help our good friend Paul Mulshine, which is why there were no complaints when his February 5 column on the idea that Mitt Romney’s campaign can run their own delegate slate in June and effectively bypass the winner-take-all system appeared to mirror a similar column on this site six days earlier.  After all, Mulshine is a better writer, and he did use the s-word. 

But one word of caution to the man who sits on the right side of the Star-Ledger:  be careful when you let C. Richard “Dick” Kamin, a man of limited intellectual capacity and even less influence, spin you on a story – especially one the ex-Motor Vehicles Director read on PolitickerNJ.com.