Clinton Donors Circulate Florida/Michigan Petition

A member of Hillary Clinton's national finance team has started to circulate an online petititon that urges the Democratic National Committee to recognize the delegations from Michigan and Florida or else promise to hold new elections.

The petition, entitled "A Declaration of Fairness," was written by Michael Kempner, a PR exec in New Jersey and a major fundraiser for Hillary Clinton.

Kempner said that the genesis for the idea came out of a meeting of the campaign's finance committee a few weeks ago but said that the effort is being run independently from the Clinton campaign.

The resolution notes that the undersigners include "many leaders and financial supporters" of the DNC. (There are only 20 undersigners at the moment, so that sentence is probably projective.)

Kempner said he sent the petition to thousands of Democratic donors and activists. In his e-mail to them, he calls Obama's "tactics" in "seeking to disenfranchise more than two million voters in Florida and Michigan" those of "division and deception."

"For whatever reason, the DNC seems to be captive of the Obama campaign," he said in an interview. "The fact is that many, many long-time supporters both financially and non-financially, that have a very different point of view. We very much want to put them on notice."

Kempner said that the petititon's language should not be interpreted by DNC chairman Howard Dean as a threat to withhold donations. But, he said, "We want the chairman to exercise some leadership."