WASHINGTON — In a setback for Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential hopes, Democratic Party officials on Saturday cut by more than half the delegate support she was hoping to receive from disputed primaries in Florida and Michigan.
After an all-day meeting punctuated by applause and jeers from a raucous audience, the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee decided that the Florida and Michigan delegates could attend the Democratic National Convention in August but that each delegate would carry only half a vote.
"You just took away our votes!" one Clinton supporter yelled at the committee. "This isn't unity!" yelled another.
In addition, rival candidate Barack Obama came away with more Michigan delegates than the Clinton campaign believes he earned -- a sore point that Clinton aides said she might appeal all the way to the convention floor.
That is a scenario that Democratic officials want to avoid. They have been hoping to settle the Michigan and Florida question in a way that ends the dispute, appeases all sides and unites the party for the general-election matchup with presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.
As the rules committee voted on the delegate plans in a hotel ballroom, Clinton supporters booed and heckled panel members, signaling that there would be a fight at the convention.
"Denver! Denver! Denver!" they chanted, a reference to the city hosting the nominating convention. Some were escorted from the room by security guards.
Clinton aides said the campaign accepted the Florida compromise but disagreed with the Michigan decision. After the "rhetoric during this meeting about democracy and on and on and on, I am stunned that we have the gall and the chutzpah to substitute our judgment for 600,000" Michigan voters, said Harold Ickes, a top Clinton strategist and a rules committee member.
Howard Wolfson, a Clinton spokesman, said in an interview after the meeting: "We are very concerned about the resolution we saw today. And Sen. Clinton reserves the right to take this to the next step."
Obama, at a campaign stop in Aberdeen, S.D., seemed pleased with the result.
"I recognize there were compromises on all sides . . . and I hope we can start focusing our attention on the substance, as opposed to just the process, of politics and explain to the American people how the Democrats are going to improve their lives," he said.
