"Sen. Obama has done much better in smaller states with caucuses. But the Clinton campaign seems to have learned from Sen. Obama's successes and is paying attention to organizing."
Millin, a superdelegate, committed to Obama back in November. He said he fell in political love after seeing the Illinois senator give his famous speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
"I was the 'You had me at hello' kind of guy," Millin said. "I knew right then that guy was going to be president one day, and I was going to be helping him."
Millin's passion got him into some hot water in December, when he gave a statement to the Denver Post suggesting that Clinton's nomination would damage the resurgence of the Democratic Party in the Rocky Mountain West and hurt other Democratic candidates on the November ballot.
"It has become the dirty little secret in the Democratic Party," wrote Millin, 49. "For reasons I don't agree with and don't completely understand, most voters in Wyoming seem to hate Hillary Clinton.
"This is in part due to the perception of her as being someone who supports big government, most notably through a federal government takeover of the healthcare system. She is also paying a heavy price for the sins of her husband."
The story was linked on the Drudge Report, then picked up by conservative pundits.
Clinton supporters, including Karpan, were outraged.
It was inappropriate for the leader of the state's Democratic Party to take sides in such a negative way, Karpan said. But more important, "I also think he's wrong. Hillary has been as vetted as anyone in the entire political history of America. She has had the kitchen sink, the kitchen and the house thrown at her, and she's still standing."
Just in the last week, Karpan said, Obama has been on the defensive -- including Friday, with the resignation of his advisor Samantha Power, who called Clinton "a monster" in an interview with a Scottish newspaper.
But in Wyoming, even Democrats stick to their guns. (Unqualified support for the 2nd Amendment is the second item of the party's platform.) And Millin is unrepentant.
"To the extent that it hurt some of my friends in the Wyoming Democratic Party, I am sorry," he said. "I don't regret having done it."
Regardless of all the Democratic attention being showered on the Cowboy State, Wyoming reliably votes Republican in presidential elections.
But Democratic officials hope that the burst of interest will help draw people to the party even after the candidates and national press pack up and move on to Mississippi -- whose 40 delegates are up for grabs Tuesday.
Any increase in the number of registered Democrats here would come as welcome news to people such as Connie Colman, 50, an adult education teacher at Casper College.
A Wyoming native and lifelong Democrat who is married to a Republican, Colman said she feels like "an oddity in this state. It's hard to meet a good Democratic man in Wyoming. . . . Not that I'm looking."
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robin.abcarian@latimes.com
