Harold Ickes never forgets a favour, especially if he’s the one who did the favour. So the veteran political operative made sure that, when the time was right, he alone would call Garry Shay, the former chairman of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party. As Ickes saw it, he had helped Shay; now he was looking for Shay to help him.And once Ickes started calling, he didn’t stop until Shay said the words Ickes wanted to hear—that he would support Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August.Shay, as a member on the Democratic National Committee, is a so-called “superdelegate,” one of nearly 800 elected officials, party leaders and activists who—with the state primaries and caucuses now expected to end in stalemate—might effectively end up picking the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate.And the man in charge of Clinton’s effort to lock up superdelegates is Ickes, whose enthusiasm for no-holds-barred politics sometimes rattles friends and foes alike. Ickes once got so carried away that he bit another political operative on the leg. Now, some 35 years later, at age 68, he’s mellowed so little it could happen again. “It depends on how heated the circumstances are,” he says.Aggressive, profane, openly scornful of rivals, Ickes rules Clinton’s superdelegate operation with an intimidating style and a mythic persona. He is “adviser, consigliere, enforcer and strategist” rolled into one, says Dick Harpootlian, a former chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party who backs Barack Obama.Ickes comes by his temperament and his passion for politics naturally. He is the son and namesake of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famously irascible Interior secretary. And he’s played the role of party maverick for decades. He worked in Eugene McCarthy’s 1968 campaign to unseat incumbent President Johnson. He joined Edward Kennedy in trying to deny President Carter renomination’s in 1980. He worked for Jesse Jackson’s presidential bids in 1984 and 1988.Temperament and eccentricities aside, with the importance of the superdelegates increasing, Ickes now carries a burden that might be second only to the candidate’s own. Clinton is ahead among superdelegates, but the margin has been slipping. In December, she led Obama by 106 superdelegates. In early February, the number was down to 87. Today, it is 36, according to Associated Press surveys.In the case of Shay, Ickes remembered that Shay had wanted to increase the representation of gays and lesbians within the national party. Ickes helped him over the years, speaking out in favour of Shay’s project at DNC meetings.
