June 23, 2008 Obama, Clinton might not find united party Play video

(Alison King, NECN: Carlisle, Mass.) - Senator Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will work to bring the party together following an intense primary season. The two will campaign together Friday in an aptly named place - Unity, New Hampshire. But as Obama seeks to rally the troops, there are some within the party who are unwilling to support the would-be Democratic nominee.

Political reporter Alison king takes a closer look.

Script:

Darragh Murphy: I put the blog up on Tuesday evening and I had 35,000 hits before 6 o’clock the next morning.

In the two weeks since then, Darragh Murphy, a Hillary Clinton supporter, has had hundreds of thousands of visitors to her website, blog.pumapac.org. Murphy says “Puma” is an acronym for People United Means Action. It is home base for her new political action committee, which Murphy, a 39-year-old mother of three, founded just as Clinton was dropping out of the Democratic race.

Darragh Murphy: The immediate, ultimate goal, is to let the party/leadership know that millions and millions of us are not going to support the candidate. That we believe the nomination process was flawed beyond belief -- that it was unfair and biased.

Murphy says she started out this primary season supporting John Edwards but started to pay closer attention to Clinton after her loss to Barack Obama in the Iowa caucuses when she says she was stunned to see the sexist way in which Clinton was treated.

Darragh

Murphy: It seemed like the media just let the dogs out in terms of treating Senator Clinton as fair game at every level.

Murphy’s pack is taking off just as Obama and Clinton announce their first joint campaign appearance of the general election. The event will take place in Unity, New Hampshire, a small town where in addition to the symbolic name, both Clinton and Obama received exactly 107 votes in the January primary.

Darragh Murphy: Hillary Clinton will be campaigning with Obama this week, she has to do that, she is a politician, that's politics. But this is not politics, this is political activism.

Our members will be protesting the election in three ways. 1 is to vote for John McCain, 2, is to stay home and 3, in some very limited cases, to write in a third party candidate.

Murphy’s organization is one of several nationwide that is far from ready to embrace Obama. The Massachusetts-based group "Every Vote Counts" is made up of longtime Democratic activists and elected officials, many of whom, are big time donors and fundraisers. Members of Every Vote Counts haven't necessarily written off Obama, but they are meeting in Boston Wednesday night to decide just how much time, money and energy they will commit to the Obama campaign in the coming months. They are the kind of supporters Obama needs.

Darragh Murphy: It wouldn’t take many, a very high percentage of Clinton supporters or moderate Democrats to switch over to McCain or to stay home for Obama to lose -- so I don't think we're fringe at all.

Murphy says her pack has already raised thousands of dollars -- and that the money will go toward advertising and spreading the word of their efforts -- to reform the Democratic Party.