Barack Obama asks Hillary Clinton to be the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention

WASHINGTON —  Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has asked former rival Hillary Rodham Clinton to be the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention, according to a former Clinton staffer, thus effectively ending hopes for a “dream ticket” between the two.

“We hope you are as pleased as we are that he has tapped Sen. Clinton to deliver one of the most important messages of that crucial week -- the very role that Barack Obama had four years ago,” said sponsors of “Vote Both,” a grassroots effort to lobby Obama to put Clinton on his ticket. “Regretfully, this means that Sen. Hillary Clinton is no longer under consideration as Sen. Obama’s running mate.”

The two former Clinton staffers who started the “Vote Both” effort say the assignment for Clinton to give the Democrats’ keynote address on Aug. 26 signals that Obama will not choose her to be his vice president. That night marks the 88th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

“Because it seems that Sen. Obama has made his decision to offer the slot on the ticket to another candidate, we believe that continuing to ask him to pick Hillary is no longer helpful to our party’s chances of winning in November,” Adam Parkhomenko and Sam Arora wrote in an e-mail they sent today to the 40,000-plus supporters who signed their online petition.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said the campaign won’t comment on the vice presidential search and hasn’t finalized the convention speaking program.

But Terry McAuliffe, who was chairman of Clinton’s campaign, signaled the speech assignment and its meaning in an interview earlier this week.

“We’ve got to be focused, everybody, when we come out of that convention,” he said on CNN. “We’ve got to come out of that thing on fire. . . . So Hillary will speak on one of the nights. People will be all pumped up. We will be a unified party.”

Meanwhile the latest polls show a tightening race between Obama and Republican John McCain - at least in Florida.

The Quinnipiac University poll found McCain narrowing Obama’s lead by one point in the last month, now at 46% to 44% with a 2.8% margin of error. The poll among likely voters in Florida also found that with gas prices topping $4 a gallon, 60% now support offshore drilling, which McCain supports and Obama opposes.

johanna.neuman@latimes.com

peter.nicholas@latimes.com