February 06, 2008
Super Tuesday Updates: New Mexico & Romney
We called it quits last night with two states outstanding. The results are in for one of the states, while the other is turning out to be a nail-biter.
In the New Mexico Democratic caucus, the Clinton-Obama contest is still too close to call. Fewer than 120 votes separated Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama after counting earlier today, so that contest will be decided by provisional ballots, the Albuquerque Journal reports. State Democratic Party workers will begin counting the more than 16,000 provisional ballots today.
Per the Journal, Clinton took most of the counties while Obama bested her in Santa Fe and Bernalillo counties. The strong Latino vote helped Clinton here, but it's too soon to tell if that will be enough.
New Mexico is a proportional delegate state, with 38 up for grabs. That means both will walk away with some of the booty. But a win here for Obama adds another swing state to his column, further undergirding his claim that he would perform better than Clinton in the general election. That's why both candidates lobbied so hard for New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson's endorsement. He declined to tap either until the nomination is decided, but he did watch the Super Bowl with Bill Clinton. (Of course, President Clinton used to be Richardson's boss.)
Meanwhile, Alaska came out strong for Obama on the Democratic side, handing him about three-quarters of the vote and nine delegates; Clinton picked up four. For the Republicans, Mitt Romney beat out Mike Huckabee; John McCain, last night's big winner, trailed a distant fourth. It's easy to forget that Alaska (and Hawaii) are part of the United States during election years. Candidates certainly seem to. But that didn't stop Alaskans braving frigid temps, traffic jams and packed caucus locations to cast their votes, the Anchorage Daily News reports.
New Mexico Republicans won't head to the polls until June, incidentally. Check The Gate for updates on the Democratic vote.
Oh, and one major FYI: Romney's still in it to win it. When we got word last night that he was meeting with his top advisers today to discuss his future, that was taken as code that the fate of his campaign hung in the balance. Super Tuesday was particularly bad for the former Massachusetts governor, as McCain swept most of the big-prize states, including California, and Huckabee stymied Romney's bid for religious conservatives in the South.
But the Romney camp confirmed that he has no intention of dropping out before the convention. Romney is arguing that he's the true conservative of the top contenders. His camp has been painting McCain as a fraud, and the problem for McCain is that lots of conservatives agree. Whether enough of them break for Romney in the upcoming contests remains to be seen, especially now that McCain is the indisputable front-runner and has a sizable delegate-count lead.
All three GOP contenders, plus Ron Paul, are speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington this week. McCain was the only presidential candidate not to appear at last year's conference in March, because of the tremendous hostility toward him from base conservatives. Romney won the CPAC straw poll (subscription), which was a key momentum-builder for him at the time.
Now that McCain's the GOP front-runner, he's got no choice but to drop in. He speaks Thursday afternoon, and we'll be there to report on how he's received.
Posted at 2:24 PM
Posted to:
Barack Obama, Campaigns, Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Republicans, WH 2008
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