The first time Hillary Clinton called, Heather Mizeur didn’t pick up. Listening to the message, she heard Clinton’s voice and assumed it was a campaign robo-call. But then the New York senator and Democratic presidential candidate asked Mizeur to call back — and left her personal cellphone number.
In the weeks that followed, Mizeur’s iPhone was besieged. Chelsea Clinton, Bill Clinton and Terry McAuliffe called to check in. So did Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), three other senators and four governors. Melissa Etheridge called, too, and invited her backstage at her next concert.
Mizeur, a freshman state legislator from Takoma Park, is a superdelegate. And through this topsy-turvy campaign, she has remained undeclared — adamantly, stubbornly undeclared.
Today, Mizeur’s exhilarating odyssey as an uncommitted superdelegate comes to an end. After last night’s contests in Montana and South Dakota, she has decided, finally, to jump off the fence.
Unlike many of the other 795 superdelegates — governors, members of congress, former presidents and party elders — Mizeur is a relative nobody in the world of presidential politics. But her status as undeclared through six months of primary voting transformed her into a somebody.
Through it all, Mizeur, 35, has kept a journal. There are the pages listing the cellphone numbers of senators, governors and the candidates themselves, who have lavished her and her partner Deborah Mizeur with attention. There are the notes from her private talks with Clinton and Obama. There are the handwritten letters from elderly women across the country asking her to choose Clinton.
