Focus Shifts to Three More Contests, After Huckabee Wins Saturday Kansas Republican Caucuses
Barack Obama, shown here at a campaign rally Saturday in Bangor, Maine, faces off against Hillary Clinton in Washington, Louisiana and Nebraska. (AP Photo)
The presidential race immediately shifted to the three remaining states holding contests Saturday, after Mike Huckabee pulled out a win in the Kansas caucuses earlier in the day.
GOP candidates move on to compete in Louisiana and Washington, while Democrats are looking to contests in Washington, Nebraska, Louisiana and the Virgin Islands to pick up momentum before the more bountiful upcoming primaries in populous East Coast states.
For Democrats, the still airtight race likely will go on for many weeks — but a sweep of wins in the upcoming contests could help boost one of the candidates to the front and prevent the race from coming down to the convention in August, which some party officials dread will happen.
For Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, 161 delegates are at stake Saturday, and 24 are available in Maine’s Democratic caucuses on Sunday.
Washington, with 78 delegates, is the biggest prize and the first of many unlikely states to be showered with attention by the candidates.
Click here for full results from the Saturday contests.
Clinton’s campaign began downplaying expectations ahead of Saturday evening’s results.
Depicting Clinton as the underdog financially, spokesman Phil Singer said the states were contests where “the Obama campaign has long predicted they would win by large margins.”
Obama raised $32 million in January, compared to Clinton, who raised $13.5 million and then lent her campaign $5 million of her personal fortune on top of that. Both candidates raised close to $7 million in the two days after Super Tuesday.
“The Obama campaign has dramatically outspent our campaign in these three states, saturating the airwaves with 30 and 60 second ads,” Singer said. “Although the next several states that hold nominating contests this month are more favorable to the Obama campaign, we will continue to compete in them and hope to secure as many delegates as we can before the race turns to Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania.”
Both candidates campaigned in Seattle and other major Washington cities ahead of the state’s contest, but headed to Maine Saturday.
There they argued how their own assets would stack up against John McCain in November, if he is the GOP nominee.
Obama said in Bangor that McCain chose to “embrace the worst aspects of the Bush legacy” by shifting to support the Bush tax cuts and backing his foreign policy.
“So the wheels came off the straight talk express because now he supports making those tax cuts permanent,” Obama said. “I greatly respect Senator McCain’s half-century of service to this nation but what America needs right now isn’t a leader who embraces the failed polices of the past … what America needs is a new generation of leadership … That’s the kind of leadership I intend to offer as president.”
Clinton said in Orono, Maine, that “every delegate is important,” and argued she’s the strongest candidate to go up against McCain.
“You’ll never have to worry about me being knocked out of the ring. I think I can go toe to toe with John McCain every single day,” she said.
She even argued Obama — the anti-war, one-term senator — is the establishment candidate.
“He has increasingly run an establishment race and he has increasingly relied on big endorsements and celebrities to attach himself to to get the kind of validation that comes from that sort of endorsement,” she said. “If we want a Democrat to be the standard bearer who stands for the positive agenda of the Democratic Party … I think I’m the best candidate to carry that message.”
Both campaigns also focused on Louisiana. Obama spoke in New Orleans Thursday about recovery needs after Hurricane Katrina, while Bill Clinton made a Friday swing through the state for his wife.
Click here to see photos from the campaign trail.
But the 185 Democratic delegates at stake in this weekend’s contests won’t guarantee a win. Neither will the 175 at stake Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia and voting by Americans overseas. Neither will the 370 at stake on March 4 in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont.
Coming out of Super Tuesday, Clinton and Obama are effectively tied. The latest tallies show Clinton with 1,055 delegates and Obama with 998, and they each need about 1,000 more to win the nomination.
Complicating that is the fact delegates are awarded proportionally for Democrats, so candidates are not just looking for wins, but big margins. And they’re looking at all the states.
Obama has been airing commercials for more than a week in television markets serving every state that has a contest though Feb 19.
Clinton began airing ads midweek in Washington state, Maine and Nebraska and added Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia on Friday.
On the GOP side, Huckabee’s win in Kansas demonstrated the lingering rift in the party after McCain was minted the clear front-runner Super Tuesday.
Huckabee beat McCain by a margin of three-to-one. Huckabee had the support of anti-abortion activists, while McCain had the backing from conservative Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback. But McCain still is trying to reach out to conservatives, many of whom are skeptical of him for taking moderate positions on campaign finance, taxes and immigration.
Huckabee pledged Saturday morning at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C., that he would be staying in the race, even though Mitt Romney’s exit earlier in the week made McCain the virtual heir to the GOP nomination.
“This is a huge win for us,” Huckabee campaign manager Chip Saltsman said. “This is a state that both candidates competed in. This shows that Washington pundits don’t pick the nominee. The folks in the states and outside the Beltway pick the nominee. So not so fast, we still have a long way to go until the nominee is picked, with 20-plus states left.”
Huckabee will have a lot farther to go to catch McCain. Kansas offers 36 total delegates, but the Arizona senator began the day with 719 delegates. Huckabee had 198, and Texas Rep. Ron Paul had 14.
McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker downplayed the Kansas loss, saying in a statement, “Our campaign fully expected to fall short in the Kansas caucus. John McCain is the presumptive nominee in this race, our path forward is unchanged by today’s results, and our focus remains the same: uniting the Republican party to defeat Democrats in 2008.”
There are 74 delegates at stake for the GOP in Saturday’s contests in Kansas, Louisiana and Washington. McCain’s campaign has said the earliest the Arizona senator could seal the nomination with the needed 1,191 delegates is the March 4 primary.
FOX News’ Aaron Bruns and Serafin Gomez and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
go huckabee
Washington ha s announced that Ron Paul won there. Why isnt this being reported?
Go Huckabee! Rick Roberts is full of Hot Air. He is a band wagon jumper. McCain is a Closet Liberal, and we can not afford to have him in office. If you thought Bush was bad, wait until you have a outspoken liberal in office known as John McCain.
Brandon, et al,
When are you going to wake up. Articulate doesn’t pay the rent. I won’t bother listing the names of the most articulate world leaders in the 20th century. Suffice to say the we kicked the crap out of most of them on the battlefields of other continents. And let’s not forget the single most impressive speaker on stump this year. Obama.
Speeches mean very little if there is no substance behind them. Once you get beyond the life issue, Huckster is a Johnny Come Lately to conservatism, just as Romney is.
Obama speaks well, but he has a raft of “Present” votes on critical issues. If he were in our party, this alone would blow him out of the water. Conservatives demand substance. Sadly, the ignorant starry eyed droolers see only the surface and not the empty shell.
Huck’s record will NOT survive intense scrutiny by conservatives. Nor will it survive the glare of the media lights. You can make all the excuses you want about why he did what he did as governor. The deeds themselves carry far more weight than the explanations.
Make no mistake. Right or wrong, the liberal media will eviscerate Huck as a hypocrite. Romney fans will also shy away, once his record is thoroughly dissected.
In the early primaries and caucuses, Huck couldn’t even pull a majority of evangelicals, much less conservatives or center-right voters.
Wake up.
I love how people become experts and come up with statements like “so and so can’t beat the other side” and “so and so is not a conservative”.
Huckabee can beat the Democrats - he did multiple times as a Republican governor in the democratic stronghold of Arkansas. Not only did he beat the Democrats and the Clinton political machine, he also got 40+% of the African American vote while doing so!
Huckabee is a conservative, always has been, always will be. Don’t believe the lies perpetrated by the Club for Romney (I mean the Club for Growth) Sean and Rush - look at the FACTS of his record and you will see what type of a conservative he is.
He supports a strong military and fighting the war on terror.
He is a fiscal conservative. People miss this because the court-ordered and people-voted on tax increases that were made effective during his term, so they are credited to him, even though he didn’t have a choice.
He is a conservative on immigration - He has the endorsement of the founder of the MinuteMen, and has a comprehensive immigration plan that does not include amnesty.
Another Lie: He can’t beat McCain. WAKE UP MEDIA - Many of Romney’s delegates are now at large. Huckabee rolled in Kansas today, taking 60% of the vote (Juan McCain got 24%) HE CAN WIN. Sure, it’s an uphill battle, but Juan McCain is not the nominee. He does not have 1,191 delegates
Huckabee’s great speech at CPAC today: http://www.hucksarmy.com/videos/HuckCPAC02092008.wmv
Anybody that would pick McKennedy (McCain) over one of the most articulate speakers in the Republican Party (Mike Huckabee) is just hoping for Hitlery to become the next president. Here is Mike Huckabee’s CPAC speech….http://www.hucksarmy.com/videos/HuckCPAC2008.html
Fox news makes me angry by snubbing Mike Huckabee.
In the last debate the txt messages came in overwelming that Mike Huckabee won the debate and the Fox news hosts acted like ” It must not be true, Just a bunch of Huckabee supporters”.
Is that reporting or slanting the news. Unfair and Unbalance.
Wow!
Mary actually brought Anne Coulter into the mix.
Anne Coulter’s primary allegiance is to Anne Coulter.
To sell her books and keep getting those lucrative speaking gigs, she deliberately inflames by going well past the conventional lines of good taste and courtesy.
Anne is the Al Franken of the conservative movement. Lots of flair and fluff designed to get your attention, but prone to departure from reality at the drop of a hat.
So, Annie is going to support Hillary? Yeah. Right. If you believe that the conservative vixen is going to pull the Billary lever once the curtain is drawn you need another sip of Kool-Aid ™.
Uh…someone needs to TELL THE BAPTISTS:
Let’s worry about the guys with suicide bombers and not worry about the Mormons…you pastors are freaks! an embarrassment to our party!!
“Lucky D” wrote, “Pastors talk too much about politics from the pulpit. It is illegal to do so according to the Internal Revenue Service.”
It IS NOT illegal to talk about politics from the pulpit. Advocating for a particular political candidate could jeopardize the church’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, however.
People need to learn the facts!
What’s REALLY going on in this nation!? Find out.