WILDER, BROWN BLAST CLINTON AS DELEGATE RULES REVIEWED

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, January 2, 1992                   TAG: 9201020039
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short
WILDER, BROWN BLAST CLINTON AS DELEGATE RULES REVIEWED
Virginia Gov. Douglas Wilder and another Democratic presidential contender on Tuesday accused Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton of a "power grab" that could rob them of delegates. Clinton aides shrugged off the complaint as a non-issue.
"I think it is an attempt to make an issue out of something that is not an issue," Clinton press secretary Dee Dee Myers said.
Blasts at Clinton came from Wilder and former California Gov. Jerry Brown after a meeting of the Democratic National Committee panel that sets the delegate selection rules.
Clinton forces had gone into the meeting with a proposal that could have made it harder for Wilder and Brown to get delegates in perhaps a dozen states. The proposal was rejected unanimously by the committee, but aides to Brown and Wilder claimed they learned of the committee meeting only at the last minute.
The charges involved a dispute which has simmered for months over delegate selection. Party rules say the percentage of the vote a candidate gets in the primary should be his percentage of Democratic National Convention delegates.
The question is what to do about candidates with only a few delegates on the primary ballot - not enough to add up to the percentage of their overall vote. Current rules say they can add delegates after the primary.
Most states have a mechanism for carrying out those rules. But about a dozen states do not.
Clinton's campaign suggested a rules interpretation under which those states' candidates could have been limited to the number of delegates they had on the primary ballot.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB