Elmer Smith: This superdelegate won't be swayed by Clinton's sales pitch

CAROL CAMPBELL likes Bill Clinton enough to listen respectfully today as he tries to get the Democratic City Committee to endorse his wife.

But the voice she will surely heed is speaking to her from the grave. It's the voice of her father, the late Edgar C. Campbell Sr.

Edgar Campbell was the dean of black politics, especially in the West Philly neighborhood where I grew up. He was a member of City Council and the Clerk of Quarter Sessions Court.

Mostly, he was the go-to guy if you needed someone to run interference when the system seemed to be lined up against you.

"My father would spin in his grave if I didn't help this young man," she said of Sen. Barack Obama.

"I'm a Democrat through and through. But I wasn't born a Democrat. I was born black."

As a ward leader, a member of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic City Committee, and one of only four superdelegates in the city, she is a prime target for Clinton's sales pitch.

But he will miss the mark with her. She will vote for Obama in Pennsylvania and again in Denver at the national convention, regardless of what the state Democratic Committee would dictate.

"Everybody knows that I'm crazy as hell," she told me. "I don't always do what I'm told."

As a superdelegate, she is free to vote her conscience, even if that means opposing the popular vote in Pennsylvania's April primary. If the state goes for Clinton, it'll go without her.

But Obama supporters have always considered the idea of superdelegates voting for someone other than who the majority of voters in their state primaries voted for as an anti-democratic manipulation.

She didn't miss a beat when I raised that with her.

"All politics is local," she said. "It's not a matter of who the state votes for; it's about who people in Philadelphia want.

"There are a number of black delegates who are pledged to Clinton. They're going to have a tough time selling that in the city.

"I think the right thing to do is to go by the sentiments of the people who put you there in the first place, not what the rest of the state does."

Her position is complicated by the fact that she wasn't elected a superdelegate by people in Philadelphia. She was appointed by the Democratic National Committee, which she will oppose if it backs Clinton.

She has been working to get union endorsements for Obama and recruiting as many ward leaders and committee members as she can buttonhole.

In her quest to keep the city committee from falling under Bill Clinton's spell tomorrow, she has a ready ally in the City Committee chair, U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, who also is a superdelegate.

"Bob is not a pledged superdelegate," she said of Brady. "He will not jump before the committee has had its say. Bob won't push for an endorsement [today]."

The Obama camp will not have the support of the mayor or the governor. The president of the local branch of the NAACP, J. Whyatt Mondesire, and several black elected officials, including Councilwoman Marian Tasco, are also in the Clinton camp, at least for now.

While the state's demographics break in Clinton's favor, the city is a different story. But nothing that happens on Election Day will sway Campbell.

"Ever since I talked to [Obama's] wife, I knew I would support him," she said.

"The very night before she called, I was thinking about my dad the day he heard that Wilson Goode would run to become the city's first black mayor.

"I thought about the gleam in his eye. 'This is the day I've been waiting for,' " he said.

"Well, I've been waiting all my life for this day.

"How do you turn your back when everything in you is crying out?" *

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith