Superdelegate juggles candidates, morning sickness

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BY DON WALTON / Lincoln Journal Star

CRETE — Surreal.

That’s the word Audra Ostergard kept choosing as she tried to describe her life as an uncommitted Democratic superdelegate in an election year like no other.

Ostergard was dealing with morning sickness from her pregnancy when Hillary Clinton called.

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Audra Ostergard

Audra Ostergard

Since then, she’s been playing phone tag with a former president, the other Clinton, and fielded a 20-minute phone call from Hollywood celeb Rob Reiner last week.

And there was that long phone conversation initiated by Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, and the meeting with Barack Obama in Omaha and the call from Michelle.

And the other word is quandary.

“I’m in a quandary,” Ostergard told 100 students Tuesday at Doane College.

“But it’s a fun quandary.”

Ostergard, 41, is a publishing representative who lives in Lincoln. She graduated from Doane in 1988.

When she was elected first associate chairwoman of Nebraska’s Democratic Party in 2004, her motivation was to help elect Democratic candidates. She viewed the accompanying status as a superdelegate simply as “a pass to the national convention.”

This year it’s much more.

Democrats are about to write history by choosing either a black or female presidential nominee and they are locked in a tight struggle that threatens to go into June or well beyond.

In the end, it’s almost certain the votes of uncommitted Democratic superdelegates will be needed to name the winner.

Not what Ostergard had in mind.

“I don’t feel my vote should be more important than (that of) the caucus voter,” she said.

“I shouldn’t count any more than you.”

But, Ostergard said, she recognizes that “neither candidate can get there” without superdelegates pushing one or the other over the top, and eventually she’ll need to weigh in.

Ostergard said she plans to wait until the end of the long march of presidential primaries and caucuses in June.

“I’m holding out to see who is going to be at the top,” she said.

“Eventually, I will have to say here’s who I want.”

Ostergard is one of two uncommitted superdelegates from Nebraska. Also waiting is State Chairman Steve Achelpohl of Omaha.

Nebraska’s other four superdelegates have committed their support to Obama, a landslide winner over Clinton in Nebraska’s Feb. 9 caucuses.

While Obama supporters suggest she should vote for the caucus winner, Ostergard said, Clinton supporters can argue that two superdelegate votes for Clinton would match the proportionate allocation of delegates determined by the caucus results.

Obama won two of every three caucus votes and a proportionate number of congressional district delegate slots.

Chelsea Clinton was the first to  place a phone call to Ostergard.

“Oh my gosh,” Ostergard remembers thinking as the wooing began with Clinton’s daughter.

When the Obama campaign called to tell her the Illinois senator would like to meet her, she thought: “This is so weird.”

For a young girl who grew up in a poor family in Sidney, it was all a little bizarre.

“I’ve seen these people on TV and they’re talking to me,” she kept thinking.

“Where are my loyalties?” she wondered. “I felt torn. I’ll just wait and hear what they all have to say.”

The superdelegates committed to Obama are Sen. Ben Nelson, National Committeeman Vince Powers of Lincoln, National Committeewoman Kathleen Fahey of Omaha and Frank LaMere of South Sioux City, who represents Native tribes as a member of the Democratic national committee.

Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com.