Hillary Clinton arrives to speak to volunteers at a Democratic Party organizing event at the Neighborhood Theatre in Charlotte, N.C., on July 25, 2016. | AP Photo Clinton team scrambles to give Sanders big Tuesday role Needing a united front, the nominee looks to her defeated competitor for help.

PHILADELPHIA — Desperate to display party unity, Hillary Clinton’s campaign is scrambling behind the scenes to give Bernie Sanders a more prominent role in Tuesday night’s convention festivities.

The Vermont senator plans to be in the Wells Fargo Arena as the state roll-call tallies are announced, a critical moment that his supporters see as one of their final ways to be heard before Clinton officially makes history as the first female presidential nominee.


Still uncertain is whether Sanders himself will be the one to make a formal request that Clinton be the party’s White House nominee by acclamation or whether his star turn comes at another point in the evening. If he did jump into the nomination process, it would be symbolism of the highest order, a repeat performance from 2008 when Clinton buried her primary season anger and officially entered Barack Obama’s name for the top of the ticket.

"That may well be the case,” Sanders told reporters at a breakfast sponsored by Bloomberg Politics on Tuesday morning when asked whether Clinton could ultimately get the unanimous support of Democratic delegates. His hint, however, didn’t touch on whether he’d be the person to formally give the nod to Clinton, who will remain at her home in Chappaqua, New York.

Pieces of the evening’s structure started to fall into place at mid-afternoon when Clinton’s campaign announced that retiring Sen. Barbara Mikulski would make the formal nomination to begin the roll-call process. The Maryland Democrat will be followed by civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis of Georgia and Na’ilah Amaru, an Iraq War combat veteran and college professor who won an online contest to participate in the convention.

But that would still leave an opening for someone on the floor — like Sanders himself — to stop the roll call at some point and move to have Clinton nominated by acclamation, much like she did for Obama eight years ago.

Sanders’ and Clinton’s teams were still working through the arrangements into the afternoon.

But for all the official maneuvering inside the Clinton and Sanders camps — they held training sessions over the weekend on how to calm unruly crowds, and their top brass remain engaged in boiler-room strategy meetings — there are still the rank-and-file Democratic delegates who have fueled the Vermont senator’s upstart bid and who insist the DNC’s second evening won’t go off without a few hitches.

Sanders’ delegates warned throughout the day Tuesday that there’ll be more booing and jeering when Clinton’s name gets mentioned on the floor. They’ll make more last-gasp appeals for Clinton’s pledged superdelegates to bolt for Sanders. And while they know the outcome is ultimately baked, they’ll relish the moment when Rep. Tulsi Gabbard places his name into nomination and then nearly two dozen states and territories announce that the senator won more delegates than Clinton.

“It’s important for us as delegates, and it’s important for the people who sent us here who feel like we were marginalized all along the way,” said Sanders delegate Denise Groves, a 40-year-old bartender from York Beach, Maine. “It’s certainly not vindication or validation for us, but it’s at least something, and we haven’t really gotten much.”

The angst among Sanders’ supporters remains palpable across this sweat-soaked city. Clinton’s lead spokesman, Brian Fallon, was booed from the back of the room during his introduction at a delegation breakfast for Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont Democrats. Then, during a question-and-answer period, he was peppered with concerns about outgoing DNC Chair Debbie 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.

“There’s so much baggage that we’re dealing with to start off the campaign toward the fall,” said Sherry Merrick, a Sanders delegate from Post Mills, Vermont.

Sanders on Monday night made his pitch for unity during a nationally televised convention speech. That followed a text message he blasted out to supporters urging them to hold off on floor protests and other disruptions. His staff says more digital pleadings are likely Tuesday night, though the senator said he couldn’t promise his backers would be on their best behavior. “We will see what happens,” he said. “I hope that our people treat the process with respect, and respect the results."

Fallon told POLITICO he expects some of the Sanders supporters’ lingering resentments to bubble up on the floor Tuesday night. “That’s to be expected. You can’t zero-out chanting or folks that want to be heard,” he said.

But the Clinton spokesman also praised Sanders’ campaign for helping to “present a united front” during the early stages of the convention. “It was good faith on their part,” he said. “They were also careful to stress that they can’t completely control their supporters. And that’s absolutely true. But I think his efforts helped. I’m not sure what tonight will bring.”

Sanders’ supporters maintain a long list of grievances, from favoritism in the Iowa caucuses to a debate schedule tilted toward low-rating weekends and the recently leaked DNC emails that show the party strategized to sink their candidate. They are unhappy that Clinton was mentioned Monday during the convention’s opening prayer and are antsy that more embarrassing online messages slated against Sanders will emerge before the end of this week’s festivities. Several of the senator’s supporters even suggested the roll-call vote was moved up a day on the schedule because of the prospect more emails would leak.

Those complaints have created such a toxic brew that even Sanders’ personal pleas for calm have gone unheeded.

“He can do whatever he wants to do,” said David Bright, a Sanders delegate and farmer from Dixmont, Maine. “The Clinton folks don’t sense the frustration here for being basically marginalized before the election was over.”

Maine state Rep. Bob Saucier, a Sanders delegate who intends to vote for Clinton come November, said he expects some of the senators’ supporters to resist all the way through the election. “I’m going to support the nominee. I think the majority of the people will do that,” he said. “There’s going to be a handful that won’t. I think that’s going to happen all over the country.”

Hours before Tuesday's speeches in the Wells Fargo Arena, representatives of Sanders’ informal delegate network had their own list of grievances. They argued that the DNC stalled them from filing the necessary paperwork to push an alternative vice-presidential candidate before the deadline. They also said they had dismissed Sanders' requests that his delegates not disrupt the floor proceedings.

Teva Gabis-Levine, a Sanders delegate from New Mexico, said he was in the arena Monday but purposefully didn't pass along the text message from the senator urging his delegates not to protest on the convention floor. "I'm looking the other away and allowing people to express themselves," he said.

Norman Solomon, a national coordinator for the Bernie Delegate Network, also shrugged off questions about any kind of floor disruption plans for Tuesday. "I just don't know what's in store," he said.

Some of Sanders’ backers also said Tuesday they recognize they’re running out of options for changing the outcome in Philadelphia.

“I think we’re kind of day to day,” Groves said. “We really are. We’re unsure about what’s going to happen. A lot of the delegates are divided. Yes, even the ones who are in the ‘Bernie or Bust’ camp. I think even they’re nervous; we don’t want Trump.”

Trying to head off even deeper rifts, Democratic Party heavyweights have increasingly begun bringing up Ralph Nader and the 2000 nail-biter presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore as evidence that Sanders’ supporters belong in the Clinton camp.

“One of the reasons we lost that race was because Democrats didn’t want it enough,” said New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. “It was the Republicans who went down to Florida and fought with all of those election officials around the hanging chads. And Democrats sort of sat back and said, ‘Well, there’s no real difference.’ Well, believe me, there is a real difference.”

Speaking at his home state’s delegation breakfast, Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, insisted he wasn’t there “to browbeat” Sanders’ supporters into joining the Clinton cause. “This is a deeply personal decision. I remember. I know how hard this is,” he said, invoking his own 2004 presidential primary campaign.

“It’s going to take them time,” Dean later told reporters. “It takes them time. The young people will be fine. The younger generation is much more pragmatic than we were. But there’s always people who if they can’t have the whole thing they don’t want anything. And there’s not much you can do about that.”

Other Democrats interviewed across the different DNC venues shrugged off the Clinton-Sanders divide, noting their party is notorious for disagreements.

“We can’t even agree on what to have for lunch some days,” said Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern. “All this other stuff, quite frankly, in the scheme of things doesn’t really matter.”

Daniel Strauss contributed to this report.