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Two Bernie Sanders Delegates. One Now Backs Clinton. One Does Not.

Amanda Vinicky

Hillary Clinton had all week to convince delegates who’d backed Bernie Sanders to get on board with her campaign. By the end of the Democratic National Convention, she'd partially succeeded.

Most of Illinois’ delegates were all gussied up for the convention’s finale.

Alison Squires, a Sanders delegate from Sugar Grove, used black makeup to paint lines across her mouth, as if it’d been sown shut.

Credit Amanda Vinicky
Bernie Sanders delegate Alison Squires of Sugar Grove used makeup to make it appear like her mouth was sown shut.

It symbolized her feeling that she’d been silenced by DNC leaders -- she says they didn't allow her to wave signs against fracking and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (though by the DNC's final night, some delegates appear to have been allowed to wave those signs).

Squires says she is a Democrat.

“Definitely going to vote down ticket Democrat. Maybe I’ll just protest and not vote for President, I’m not sure," she said Thursday night.

Squires says she doesn’t believe anything Clinton says, so what Clinton said in her acceptance speech wouldn’t make a difference.

But that’s what did the trick for another Sanders delegate, Martese Chisom of Chiacgo.

“She knocked it out of the park. Cause I was still undecided, but she knocked it out of the park,” Chisom said, beaming. "When she talked about main street, she talked about the have-nots. I hadn't heard that the first three days. But she touched everything that I wanted her to discuss today."

As balloons popped and fell around her, Chisom said she now believes Clinton has what it takes to “crush” and stand up against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Amanda Vinicky moved to Chicago Tonight on WTTW-TV PBS in 2017.