PHILADELPHIA — Hillary Clinton sat in a locker room in the bowels of the Wells Fargo Center on Wednesday night, watching President Barack Obama make the case for passing her the baton.

With her longtime aides Huma Abedin and Capricia Marshall by her side, she grew emotional watching her onetime rival bring down the hall — at one point placing her hand over her chest as she watched.


Gone from the convention floor were the pro-Bernie Sanders protesters who had disrupted speakers on the opening day of the convention. The “Not For Sale!” chants were replaced with exclamations of “We Love You;” the anti-TPP signs overwhelmed in a sea of “Yes We Can” posters distributed to delegates on the floor — Obama’s famous 2008 rallying cry, now printed in the Clinton campaign’s official font, a customized version of Sharp Sans entitled, appropriately, “Unity.”

But the picture of an optimistic, unified party didn’t just happen on its own. Sure, by Day 4, the Democratic National Convention would look smooth, expertly choreographed and far more effectively produced than the Republican programming a week earlier. But that was the result of days of negotiating and wrangling with Bernie Sanders, adjusting the schedule and creating opportunities to publicly make peace between the party’s rival factions.

It wasn’t easy to do.

***

The Clinton campaign began planning for the convention in April after winning the New York primary. They hired Ricky Kirschner, a nine-time Emmy Award-winning producer whose credits include the 2013 Super Bowl halftime show starring Beyoncé, the 2015 Super Bowl halftime show starring Katy Perry, as well as Obama’s 2012 convention. The campaign’s top consultants, Jim Margolis, Mandy Grunwald and Joel Benenson, all experienced at running conventions, were tasked with the run of show, intro videos and speaker lineup.

The Sanders campaign was in a convention state of mind early, too. In March, Sanders adviser Mark Longabaugh told convention CEO Leah Daughtry the senator’s team would want a boiler room, the nerve center from which the nominee’s staff would traditionally oversee the show. Daughtry didn’t understand the request: The nominee’s team would be in charge, she said. Longabaugh’s response was unsettling for Democrats: What if there’s a contested convention, he asked.

The message was quickly conveyed to Brooklyn.

Clinton’s chief administration officer, Charlie Baker, reached out to Longabaugh. Brooklyn wasn’t going to fight. Instead, Clinton’s team offered Sanders shared access to the boiler room. The Clinton team had realized it would have to accommodate more demands from the Sanders camp than it had bargained for if it wanted the certainty of a smooth program.

As Baker worked out the logistics with the Sanders campaign, three separate teams inside Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters were crafting suggested themes for the convention. Independently, each settled on the same one — “Stronger Together.” It was an odd moment of consensus for a campaign that spends hours debating issues large and small. So when the three teams dialed into a conference call to discuss the convention message, it was a short discussion; team members joked that they didn’t know what to do when they agree.

After the California primary on June 7, the Clinton campaign team began convention planning in earnest. They intended to create two plans. One assumed Sanders would endorse Clinton before the convention and be awarded a major speaking role on opening night. That was Plan A.

Plan B would be one that Brooklyn would activate if Sanders didn’t endorse. “We never really got to Plan B,” admitted a campaign source involved with the planning.

***

When the two teams arrived in Philadelphia the Friday before the convention, the Clinton team already knew it would have problems with Sanders’ supporters. And that was even before news broke that Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz had been working against the senator from Vermont.

Clinton’s convention planners met with the Sanders team at the Sonesta Hotel, and they found his aides willing to help quell the expected floor insurgency. Together, they created a joint whip operation to keep the floor under control — each state delegation was assigned a Sanders official and a Clinton official to talk down dissenters. Sanders’ former Iowa state director, Robert Becker, was the main point person on the floor to explain to angry protesters why Sanders had chosen to back Clinton.

But they weren’t as quick to find consensus on Sanders’ speaking slot. The Clinton campaign had scheduled Sanders to take the stage at 9 p.m. — not only before the coveted 10 p.m. hour but as a warm-up act for Elizabeth Warren and Michelle Obama, and even Paul Simon.

Sanders wasn’t having it, according to sources inside his camp. Sure, Paul Simon was alright — it was Simon’s idea to have “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” play as Sanders wrapped— but after giving a full-throated endorsement of a rival he knew had the unfair advantage of a party establishment working the levers in her favor, he wanted the primo speaking slot.

When the teams met again on Sunday night at the Wells Fargo Center, Clinton’s aides agreed to give Sanders what he wanted. And they made another concession: After originally cutting former NAACP president Ben Jealous, a vocal Sanders surrogate, from the main stage, Clinton’s team bowed to Sanders’ demand that he be added back to the program.

There was one Sanders surrogate who wouldn’t get past Clinton’s convention gatekeepers, though — former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner, who has been highly critical of Clinton throughout the campaign after initially endorsing her. Clinton’s team denied Sanders’ request that Turner nominate him on Tuesday.

Throughout the week, Margolis and Grunwald reviewed every word entered into the teleprompter from their small room in the basement of the arena. They were also on ego patrol, balancing the needs of politicians and Hollywood stars, paring down the speeches to make sure the convention stayed on schedule — and on message.

Team Sanders, meanwhile, was managing its own delegates, texting them to be respectful with a message from campaign manager Jeff Weaver after they revolted against Sanders in a Monday morning event.

On Monday night, however, the Clinton camp’s careful control over the program hit a road bump. Sanders’ operatives wouldn’t hand over his speech, which they said he was still writing until the last moment. Weaver and Longabaugh tried to calm them down. “You will like the speech,” they promised.

***

Hillary Clinton's acceptance speech at the 2016 DNC Hillary Clinton accepted the nomination for the candidate for the Democratic party on Thursday at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.

Clinton’s aides had nothing to worry about. At least not from Sanders.

“I am proud to stand with her,” he told the crowd.

He backed up his loyalty by making the rounds to state delegation breakfasts the next day with an unequivocal message to his holdout supporters: “It’s easy to boo, but it’s harder to look at your kids in the face, who would be living under a Donald Trump presidency.”

But it was Day 2, and Sanders’ supporters weren’t giving up.

Press secretary Brian Fallon was booed while speaking at a breakfast for Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont delegates. Then, during a question-and-answer period, he was peppered with concerns about outgoing Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Wasserman Schultz’s new role as a volunteer coordinator on the Clinton campaign and how that would make their jobs that much more difficult in recruiting volunteers and generating excitement for the Democratic ticket against Donald Trump.

Indeed, the Clinton campaign realized quickly on Tuesday that Monday’s moment of unity, courtesy of Sanders, hadn’t satisfied the nominee’s detractors. Now, the campaign needed to make sure protesters wouldn’t disrupt the historic roll call that would officially make Clinton the first woman in history to be nominated to the top of a major party’s ticket.

The campaign blasted out an email to its delegates, urging them to take the SEPTA train to the Wells Fargo Center and pack the stands by 2 p.m.

Meanwhile, Robby Mook and Charlie Baker sat down with Jeff Weaver and other Sanders operatives, eager to find a way for Sanders to again play peacemaker. Sanders seemed willing.

He agreed to offer an acclamation speech, taking the mic during roll call to ask that the rules be suspended and Clinton named nominee. But he wanted to do it on the main stage.

Clinton’s campaign said no. He had been given his due on Monday and Tuesday was meant to mark a pivot to Clinton and her record.

Sanders didn’t push it. Indeed, Clinton’s aides said he did “everything we asked of him.”

***

It wouldn’t be the end of the disruptions.

After the roll call, the protests moved outside the hall. One of Clinton’s most aggressive surrogates, super PAC maestro David Brock, was chased through the halls of the Wells Fargo Center by two Sanders delegates after Bill Clinton’s Tuesday night speech, according to a Democrat who witnessed the spectacle. “They were yelling ‘you f—g jerk,’” said the Democrat.

And on Wednesday, Sanders protesters stormed the media tents to express their outrage that Turner had been denied a spot on the debate stage.

But what had been a raging boil on Monday was by Thursday morning just a simmer.

Clinton’s historic acceptance speech — at least on television — looked like it was delivered to a unified crowd. Sanders’ campaign had sent delegates text messages urging them to respect her, just as her supporters respected him. And throughout the speech, Becker worked the convention floor, leading a whip team to calm restive Bernie or Busters. The few remaining hecklers, stationed here and there, mostly in the upper decks of the arena, were drowned out repeatedly by chants of “Hillary.”

Gone on Day 4 were the handmade anti-TPP banners and the Bernie-or-Bust T-shirts. The room instead was flooded with American flags and the delegates on cue waved the signs passed to them by convention volunteers to create a uniform look for a television audience.

All the delegates, that is, except one. In the section closest to the Democratic nominee, a red sign with black lettering was lifted high into the air where it stayed stationed all night above all of the “Stronger Together” placards Clinton’s team had dreamed up before they even knew Sanders would still be hanging on into convention week.

It read: “Keep your promises.”

Darren Samuelsohn and Kenneth P. Vogel contributed to this report.

