After Tearful Goodbye Meeting With Bernie Sanders, Oregon Delegates May Just Vote for Hillary Clinton

The Vermont senator met with his supporters this morning at Crown Plaza King of Prussia Hotel. Here's what it was like in the room.

Nico Serra, an Oregon at-large delegate to the Democratic National Convention, is still unwilling to say the phrase, "I'm voting for Hillary Clinton."

But he will do it.

"I support the Democratic Party and I support its nominee," says Serra, who is pledged for Bernie Sanders. "Our nominee."

That reluctance remains even after Serra met Sanders when the former candidate stopped this morning at the Oregon delegation's hotel and urged delegates to vote for Clinton.

During an approximately half-hour meeting at Crown Plaza King of Prussia Hotel in Valley Forge, Penn., Sanders highlighted the progress his supporters had made in building a movement and shifting the Democratic Platform left. He also spoke in support of Clinton.

Delegates said the meeting was an emotional one.

"It was basically congratulating us for what we'd been able to accomplish," says Gregory McKelvey, a delegate representing Congressional District 3, also pledged for Sanders. "There were five or six people who broke down crying." (McKelvey added that he was one of them.)

"I've already been grieving this for awhile," Serra says.

But Sanders may have accomplished his goal. On the last day of a convention fraught with party division—including a protest where Oregon's delegates, wearing gags, staged a walkout, and another where they chanted "No more war" at former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta—some of his delegates say they will, if necessary, vote for Clinton.

"If it looks like Hillary is going to be winning in a landslide, I'll vote for Jill Stein," McKelvey tells WW. "But if the race is really close, I'm going to vote for Secretary Clinton."

Abigail Collins, another delegate representing Oregon's Congressional District 3, says that though she's still undecided, her vote will probably end up going to Clinton.

"More than likely it's going to be Hillary," Collins tells WW. "Revolutions don't happen overnight. Those people who support Hillary had to wait four years. I can wait another four years."

Most of all, Oregon's delegates say they'll miss the Vermont senator and the movement he created.

"As he left the room, it's hitting everybody, like 'Damn, this is it,'" McKelvey says.

"I call him Saint Sanders," Serra says. "He's just remarkable."

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