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Bernie Sanders picked up the support of Democratic National Committeewoman Pat Cotham, a North Carolina superdelegate. | AP Photo North Carolina superdelegate endorses Sanders

The Associated Press may have declared Hillary Clinton the Democratic nominee, but Bernie Sanders is still picking up superdelegates.

Democratic National Committeewoman Pat Cotham, a North Carolina superdelegate, said Monday evening she would support Sanders. The endorsement came on the eve of contests in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota.

"Yeah," said Cotham, "it's been coming on me the last few weeks really."

Cotham's backing came less than an hour before the AP reported that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had passed the 2,383 delegate threshold needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.

Cotham, a Mecklenburg County commissioner, said she decided to back Sanders in recent weeks because she believed he would be a better opponent against Donald Trump in the general election.

"He can beat Trump and we cannot have Donald Trump," Cotham said in an interview. "The polls show that [Bernie] has a better chance of beating him than Secretary Clinton does. That's just how I came to it."

In July 2015 Hans Goff, then the Clinton campaign's southern region political director, emailed Cotham about getting her support as a superdelegate. Goff relayed a pledge form to Cotham to sign. A week later, she emailed back saying she did not want to sign the pledge.

"Hans, I am not comfortable signing this so early," she wrote on July 21.

But Cotham said she planned to support the Democratic nominee, even if in the end it's not Sanders.

"I will support the nominee of the Dems," Cotham said, adding that she still supported Sanders even after the AP called the primary for Clinton.

Superdelegate pledges are not unique to the Clinton campaign or to this campaign cycle. Bob Mulholland, a California superdelegate supporting Clinton in 2016 as he did in 2008, remembers calling around to other superdelegates to encourage them to sign the pledge in 2008.

"You have to have a record, you can't just have an email that someone can't find," Mulholland said. "It was the way to find the serious people. The serious people who seriously committed would sign it right away and get it back and turn it into the campaign."

