PHILADELPHIA — On the same day Democrats formally nominated Hillary Clinton for president, one of Colorado’s biggest advocates for Bernie Sanders urged his supporters to give Clinton a chance after the Democratic National Convention — a plea that several Sanders delegates said they were not ready to do.
Choking back tears at one point, Sanders backer and state Rep. Joe Salazar highlighted the stakes of the election in a breakfast speech Tuesday to Colorado delegates attending the convention. He acknowledged the challenge of supporting a former rival, but said the alternative was too dangerous for any other course of action.
“As bitter as it might be for some of you — and it is bitter for me, too — I’m going to ask you to switch gears,” said Salazar, noting Sanders’ vocal endorsement of Clinton the night before. “As much as it’s going to hurt to do this, we have to.”
But many of the 41 Sanders delegates that Colorado sent to the convention said backing Clinton is still a bitter pill to swallow.
They expressed frustration at a process they see as weighted in Clinton’s favor — from the outsized role of party officials in picking the nominee to explicit favoritism from the Democratic National Committee and its former chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who resigned this week under a cloud of controversy.
“It was not fair. It was a rigged election. It was a fraudulent election,” said Kona Morris, a Sanders delegate from Denver. “At what point is enough? I mean if we don’t stand up for our rights to not have our voices suppressed, it’s not going to happen.”
She said she understood the reason behind Salazar’s call to support Clinton — as well as Sanders’ own endorsement — but Morris argued that Democratic leaders were being too heavy-handed in using Republican nominee Donald Trump as a bludgeon to compel Sanders supporters to get behind Clinton.
“I am not going to take responsibility if Trump wins. I will not take responsibility for that. I don’t believe anybody who doesn’t vote for Hillary should take responsibility for that. I think the DNC is making a very clear choice right now and it’s a poor choice,” she said.
Added Cleo Dioletis, another Sanders delegate from Colorado: “I love Bernie Sanders. But it’s our revolution now.”
Their reluctance is another sign of the work ahead for the Clinton campaign, in spite of calls for unity at the Democratic party’s four-day convention in Philadelphia. The amount of work depends on the number of Sanders supporters back home who remain as skeptical as the delegates they sent to the convention.
“She has to do everything she can to win their support without hamstringing her efforts to implement change,” said Ben Davis, a Democratic strategist from Colorado. “There are a portion of Sanders’ voters who are so far to the left that earning their support is not a practical option for the Clinton campaign.”
At the presidential roll call vote Tuesday in Philadelphia, Colorado Democratic Chair Rick Palacio announced Colorado would cast 41 votes for Sanders and 36 for Clinton. Of the 36 Clinton votes, 11 were from so-called superdelegates: top party officials who are not bound to follow electoral results from the state they represent.
The 11 superdelegates from Colorado represent a near-sweep for Clinton among the 12 members in that voting bloc, a situation that Sanders supporters say is unfair given that Colorado overwhelmingly backed Sanders this year.
The one superdelegate exception was U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, who abstained.
Andrew Zucker, a Bennet spokesman, said Bennet abstained from the vote because he was not in Philadelphia. But he added that if Bennet were in town Tuesday for the convention — Bennet is scheduled to arrive Wednesday — he would have supported Clinton, as he has said before.
