By Marie Horrigan, CQ Staff

A Thursday afternoon deadline looms in the convoluted dispute over Michigan’s currently barred 156-member delegation to this summer’s Democratic National Convention. A proposal to hold a new June 3 Democratic presidential primary — to supercede the Jan. 15 primary that violated Democratic National Committee (DNC) scheduling rules and prompted the DNC’s controversial decision to strip the state’s Democrats of all their delegates — must receive approval from the state legislature before the state House begins a scheduled two-week recess on Friday.

The likelihood of such a outcome has dimmed over the course of this week, as a stalemate over a solution appeared to pit Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and supporters of his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination against his opponent, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton , the Michigan Democratic Party, and a council made up of four senior leaders of the state party.

Technically, the legislature would have until April 4 to complete work on a bill to establish a June 3 primary, as state law requires such an action no less than 60 days before an election is held. But the state House is scheduled to be out of session from Friday, March 21, through April 7, and the state Senate has a recess scheduled from March 28 through April 14.

The four-member delegation — composed of U.S. Sen. Carl Levin , U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick , United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger and DNC Member Debbie Dingell — said in a statement late Wednesday that they met with the Democratic caucuses in the state House and state Senate to urge them to act on the proposed legislation.

“We continue to believe that the Michigan delegation should be seated at the Democratic National Convention while avoiding a fight before the Credentials Committee or on the floor of the convention. We believe that the best hope of achieving this objective is the passage of the bill before the State Legislature creating a state-run primary in early June, which would not use any state funding,” read the statement.

Yet the legislation remained stalled late Wednesday in the Republican-controlled Michigan Senate, where top Democrats indicated it lacked the two-thirds supermajority necessary to pass the bill.

Matt Marsden, a spokesman for Republican state Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, said discord among Democrats halted any progress on the bill. “Until we see some kind of unified front from the Democrats in terms of what direction they want to go and will the outcome be accepted by all parties, there’s not going to be any action taken on the legislation,” he told CQ Politics.

A long memo issued by Obama’s campaign Wednesday morning underscored that the Democratic unity demanded by the GOP legislators is not yet forthcoming. The document outlined Obama’s reservations about the details in the legislation to implement a new June 3 primary.

State Senate Democratic Floor Leader Buzz Thomas, who supports Obama, said in his own statement that the proposed legislation is “so riddled with problems that they overwhelm any possible positive outcome for the people of Michigan.”

Like Obama’s campaign, Thomas questioned the prudence of the bill’s provisions under which the logistics for holding a primary re-vote would be funded an election through private donations, and related concerns expressed by county clerks about their ability to carry out an election in the allotted time frame.

“There are a number of fair and easy solutions to this mess — like splitting Michigan’s delegates in half, 50 percent for Obama and 50 percent for Clinton — that would guarantee that our delegates are seated, without having to spend countless of millions of dollars that we could spend in the fall,” Thomas said in his statement, referring to a general election campaign for the partisan swing state’s 17 electoral votes.

The Obama camp in its memo described several serious potential problems and questions that “could put at risk the running of the election, undermine acceptance of the results if the election is held and in both cases effectively deny Michigan voters, a second consecutive time, meaningful participation in the nominating process.”

The campaign cited concerns over the possibility that the legislation would disqualify voters who participated in the Republican presidential primary, also held Jan. 15, from voting in a June 3 Democratic primary. The campaign also expressed concern about the implication of using possibly sizable financial contributions from individuals, known as “soft money,” to cover the costs of a re-vote that could cost up to $12 million. The DNC, while demanding that Michigan and Florida re-do their presidential contests within the party’s rules, has ruled out funding new contests on those states, and the factions in the Michigan dispute agree that state taxpayers should not be asked to bear the costs.

The Obama campaign also cited the tight timeline for the election, which would make it difficult to pre-clear the plan under the federal Voting Rights Act, and said election workers in Michigan believe that the plan would be impossible to implement on such a short turnaround basis.

The campaign said such questions “are serious in both their nature and in their potential, if not likely, impact on the June 3 election proposal.”

The hesitance shown by the Obama camp over the primary “do-over” plan contrasted with the position taken by Clinton, who traveled to Detroit Wednesday for a rally advocating state legislative approval of a June 3 re-vote.

Clinton said Wednesday that her participation in the Michigan primary underscores her dedication to voting rights. “I will always defend your right to vote, no matter who you choose to vote for in the end,” she said. “It is not about that at all. Because I believe that Michigan families are just as important as the families in any other state.”

Clinton criticized Obama for his opposition to the plan. “Sen. Obama speaks passionately on the campaign trail about empowering the American people. Today I’m urging him to match those words with action, to make sure the people of Michigan and Florida have a voice and a vote in this election,” Clinton said. “I have accepted the plan for a new vote in Michigan . . . I call on Sen. Obama to do the same. This is a crucial test. Does he mean what he says or not?”

The DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Committee issued a statement Wednesday that the plan would pass muster under national party rules while Mark Brewer, chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, said in a written statement he supported the legislation. “None of the legal objections to the legislation have any merit, and in my opinion, this legislation satisfies all DNC and legal requirements,” Brewer said.