Enlarge By Joshua Roberts, Reuters Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama speaks to the Communication Workers of America (CWA) 2008 Legislative-Political Conference in Washington D.C. on Tuesday. Dozens of local Democratic Party leaders are urging Virginia's superdelegates to unite around Obama.  CLOSE-UP: BARACK OBAMA In-depth: Latest Obama news, video, photos, timeline, more ... Barack Obama on the campaign issues: Iraq | Immigration | Health care | Education | Abortion | Gay civil rights  2008: MCCAIN VS. OBAMA USA TODAY's interactive presidential poll tracker helps you dig into the polling trend lines in all 50 states and nationwide.  CLOSE-UP: HILLARY CLINTON In-depth: Clinton news, videos, photos, timeline, more ... Hillary Clinton on the campaign issues: Iraq | Immigration | Health care | Education | Abortion | Gay civil rights

The petition was intended to push the state's uncommitted delegates into forsaking Hillary Clinton in her nomination battle with Obama.

It was signed by 36 local party chairmen, some of them from Virginia's largest localities, and five congressional district party chairs. Most of the signers, but not all, endorsed Obama, said Arlington Chairman Peter Rousselot, one of the architects of the petition.

There was no evidence Tuesday that the tactic was working, even on a superdelegate who endorsed Clinton but has wavered for weeks.

Jennifer McClellan, a member of the House of Delegates, said she won't make up her mind until all of the Democratic state conventions and caucuses are over.

"It's not clear to me because people aren't finished voting," said McClellan, of Richmond. In an interview Tuesday, she at times referred to herself as uncommitted. Finally, she described herself as a Clinton delegate who reserves the right to change her mind.

She also opposes any formal process for forcing superdelegates to decide the nomination before the August convention.

Already, she has received "well over 100 calls" from Clinton and Obama, from their celebrity spouses, and from proxies within both campaigns in recent months. The Clintons beseech her to stay put; Obama exhorts her to switch.

The candidate the Democrats choose to take on Republican nominee-apparent John McCain will be selected by about 3,500 delegates to the party's national convention in August. More than three-fourths are pledged delegates, obliged to support a specific candidate based on the outcome of state primaries or caucuses. About 800 are superdelegates — elected officials or party insiders free to support any Democratic candidate at the convention.

Since neither Clinton nor Obama can win the 2,025 votes necessary to secure the nomination solely from pledged delegates, superdelegates will determine the outcome.

Across the nation, candidates are ardently pursuing uncommitted superdelegates and, in some cases, urging committed ones to switch. Virginia is the first state in which local chairmen petitioned superdelegates to switch to Obama, according to Clinton's campaign.

Five of Virginia's 16 superdelegates never have endorsed any candidate. A sixth, state chairman C. Richard Cranwell, was a John Edwards superdelegate who became uncommitted after Edwards left the race.

Cranwell remained uncommitted on Tuesday, but saw no harm in the petition. "Everybody's got a right to a point of view," Cranwell said. The rough-and-tumble would only toughen the eventual nominee to take on McCain, he said.

Sen. Jim Webb, through his office, also refused to take sides Tuesday.

Rousselot and Fairfax County Chairman Scott Surovell sent the petition to the superdelegates. Both are former Edwards backers, but neither is a superdelegate.

The petition contends that it's important for the party to unify sooner instead of later and shift its focus to McCain. With Obama and Clinton fighting each other through the convention, it asserts, Democrats will squander tens of millions of dollars and present the unappealing image of a party run by insiders.

"We're just saying look at the time, the money and the effort that will be spent fighting this. The cost-benefit of this is not adding up," Rousselot said in an interview.

The petition urges superdelegates to remember that Obama won the Virginia primary in February by nearly a 2-to-1 ratio over Clinton.

That galled Clinton superdelegate Susan Swecker, who rocketed a reply back to Rousselot and Surovell and, for good measure, copied in the pro-Obama Democratic blog Raising Kaine, which first reported the petition on Monday.

"...If that is your premise, then please encourage Congressman Rick Boucher (whose 9th Congressional District went overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton) to switch his support from Obama to Clinton," she wrote.

Another Clinton superdelegate, senior Democratic strategist Mame Reiley, said she understood targeting undecided superdelegates, but including longtime Clinton supporters only created ill will.

"If we wanted to have a nominee decided in June then we'd have scheduled the convention in June," Reiley said. "It sort of makes me wonder what they're afraid of."