Opinion: Staunch Hillary Clinton delegate axed by Wisconsin party

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Well, they got her.

Debra Bartoshevich, the duly elected Democratic Party delegate for Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin who vowed undying loyalty to the former first lady, has been dumped by the state party and barred from attending the Democratic National Convention in Denver next month.

According to the Associated Press, the state party’s administrative committee has officially whacked Bartoshevich from the 92-member delegation.

Bartoshevich campaigned tirelessly for Clinton in Wisconsin and traveled to other states at her own expense. She was excited at the prospect of the first female candidate for president in a major party.

A 41-year-old emergency room nurse who says she’s never voted Republican in her life, Bartoshevich was fiercely in favor of Clinton’s universal healthcare program. She donated chunks of her salary to the New York senator. Bartoshevich was elected a convention delegate at the county level and was very excited about the trip to her lifelong party’s national convention. (As she explains in detail in this video available by clicking on Read more line below.)

But when Barack Obama won sufficient delegates to capture the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, Bartoshevich was bitterly disappointed. Not unlike a lot of the 17 million supporters who...

...voted for the New York senator. While Clinton has urged her backers to support Obama, many seem to be hesitating.

‘No self-respecting woman should wish or work for the success of a party that ignores her,’ Bartoshevich told a local journalist. ‘That’s by Susan B. Anthony.’

Bartoshevich had such residual anger about the treatment of Clinton by her party that she said come Nov. 4 she was going to vote for John McCain, who is not a lifelong Democrat.

State party chair Joe Wineke, an ardent supporter of John Edwards until he became an ardent supporter of Obama, began proceedings to strip the delegate status from Bartoshevich.

Before the vote, Bartoshevich told the committee by phone that she, like millions of American women, had been ‘inspired’ by Hillary Clinton’s run and that her loss last month was ‘an emotional time.’

Bartoshevich said she was open to persuasion by Obama and pleaded for the opportunity to listen and to cast her vote for Sen. Clinton in Denver.

The committee voted 23-0 to throw her out.

-- Andrew Malcolm