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With Sen. Hillary Clinton formally throwing her support to rival Sen. Barack Obama today, the fight is on to determine whether her supporters will do the same in November. 
For some Clinton backers in Pennsylvania and other battleground states, it will come down to one thing: whether Obama picks her as his running mate for the Democratic presidential ticket.

“I will never vote for him — none of my family, none of my friends will — if she is not on the ticket. … We are going to have to go Republican,” said Barbara George, 69, of Greensburg.

A lifelong Democrat, George was one of the voters who propelled the New York senator to a 9-point victory over Obama in Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary.

With emotions still raw after a long, acrimonious Democratic primary season, Republican Sen. John McCain is aggressively courting disappointed voters like George.

This week Sen. Joe Lieberman, the maverick former Democrat who ran for vice president with Al Gore in 2000, launched “Citizens for McCain” under the Arizona Republican’s campaign umbrella.

Westmoreland County politicos so far have seen little shakeout from the end of the Democratic presidential primary but expect to see some soon.

GOP Committee Chairman Perry Christopher said Friday that he has had no contact from Hillary Clinton supporters and has heard little about possible Democratic defections to the campaign of presumptive Republican nominee McCain.

Still, officials anticipate there will be a significant number of Clinton backers who will eventually side with McCain in the fall.

“I don’t think Barack Obama is going to play well in Westmoreland County. I was at the polling places (in April), and people said they would not support Obama if Hillary Clinton lost,” Christopher said. “There are not a lot of affluent, latte drinking people in Westmoreland County and that seems to be his forte.”

Clinton soundly defeated Obama in Westmoreland County, by a more than 2-to-1 margin, 69 percent to 31 percent.

But, here, support was primarily at the polls and not from the checkbooks. According to the most recently released campaign finance data available, Obama raised more than $19,000 in Westmoreland County. The Clinton campaign raised $6,850.

Obama leads

A CBS News poll released Wednesday found 22 percent of Clinton supporters nationwide said they would vote for McCain in the general election. Sixty-three percent said they would back Obama, while 8 percent said they won’t support either candidate.

The same poll showed Obama leading McCain among registered voters nationwide, 48 percent to 42 percent.

“By the weekend before the election, I think 95 percent of (Clinton voters) will be supporting Sen. Obama,” said Gov. Ed Rendell, who campaigned hard for Clinton. “It’s going to take a little bit of time. It’s going to take some campaigning by Senator Clinton herself.”

New voters Obama attracts will overcome any Democrats he loses, the governor predicted.

Rendell pledged to “work as hard as I can” to help Obama win the state. But he said he does not want to be considered for the vice presidential slot.

“I’m not a good No. 2 guy,” Rendell said.

Pennsylvania is just one of the pivotal states that could determine the next president. Polls in Ohio and Florida have shown Obama trailing McCain, while Clinton held a lead.

Loyal to Hillary

Clinton and Obama met privately in Washington on Thursday night at the home of U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. Obama has not signaled who will join him on the Democrat ticket.

Even if Clinton urges her supporters to swing to Obama, some loyalists promise to resist.

Cristi Adkins, a nurse from suburban Washington, organized protests at Democratic Party meetings called to decide how to allocate delegates from Florida and Michigan.

Now as the leader of a Web site, www.Clintons4McCain.com, she is making the rounds on political TV shows, asking other Clinton backers to pledge money and time to defeat Obama.

The Illinois senator “has offended me as a Christian,” Adkins said, disputing his interpretations of Scripture. She claimed Obama is “underscrutinized” and questioned why, if he is not a Muslim, rumors to the contrary persist.

“I don’t think Obama is a true patriot. I think he has an underlying agenda that has not yet been revealed,” Adkins said.

Currying her voters

To curry Clinton supporters, McCain will have to overcome the fact that his positions are at odds with hers, including his opposition to abortion. He opposes government-run health care, and withdrawal from Iraq, both staples of the Clinton campaign, and he favors extending President Bush’s tax cuts, which she opposes.

Still, some observers think policy issues could take a back seat to concerns about Obama’s inexperience and, perhaps more importantly, his race.

“I know there’s a lot of people I’ve heard say that they wouldn’t vote for him because he was black,” said Glenda Yakell, a department store worker in Sharon, Mercer County.

Yakell, 66, voted for Clinton in April, but said she will support Obama. She predicted he will win in November.

“I hope that with his being black, he wouldn’t be more for his people. I would hope he’s going to stay on the same line and treat everybody the same. I think he will,” Yakell said.

Uphill challenge

Pennsylvania voters have gone for the Democrat in the past four presidential elections. Recent polls showed Obama leading McCain here, though Clinton had a wider lead.

If they hope to prevail in November, Republicans have their work cut out here. Their party was outnumbered statewide before the high-profile primary brought new voters in droves to the Democrat side.

Nearly 153,000 voters registered as Democrats for the state primary, according to the Pennsylvania Department of State. That is almost four times the number who joined the GOP.

Another 164,000 voters switched affiliation to the Democrats, compared to fewer than 15,000 who switched to the Republican side. Not all were cross-party switches; some were independents or third-party members, and state numbers don’t specify.

Fred Lebder, chairman of the Fayette County Democratic Committee, said it wouldn’t be unusual for disgruntled Clinton supporters to mull throwing their support to McCain, but predicted such feelings would pass.

“You always have that, after every primary,” Lebder said. “As time goes on, that will disappear.”

Mark Houser