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COLUMBIA, S.C. — The stage was set for an expensive and closely watched Senate race in Maine as Democrat Tom Allen brushed aside his primary challenger while South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham easily won his primary against a fellow Republican.

Meanwhile, South Carolina’s Democratic Senate primary was headed for a recount after Tuesday’s vote.

And in Virginia, a county official beat a former congresswoman in the bitter Democratic contest for the seat being vacated by retiring Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Davis.

Allen beat political newcomer Tom Ledue, racking up more than 80 percent of the vote in the Senate primary. Allen now faces Republican incumbent Susan Collins in one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races this fall. Collins was unopposed in the Republican primary.

In South Carolina, Graham won against challenger Buddy Witherspoon, who accused him of being too liberal and hammered his ties to John McCain.

Attorney Michael Cone and engineer Bob Conley were seeking the Democratic nomination for Graham’s seat. But with all precincts reporting, the race between the two was nearly evenly split and headed to an automatic recount. Conley led the race by less than 1,000 votes.

“Principled compromise is the lifeblood of democracy and those who seek principled compromise to advance their state and their nation are doing what the voters want,” Graham said in his victory speech.

Witherspoon, a retired orthodontist and former Republican National Committee member, criticized the one-term incumbent Graham as too liberal for conservative South Carolina. Graham also took heat from the potential Democratic challengers on a failed illegal immigration measure he and McCain worked on.

Graham’s immigration measure, which would have provided a path to citizenship, drew derision last year at the state GOP convention, and Cone and Conley both called the plan amnesty for illegal immigrants.

But Graham, an Air Force Reserve colonel who has served in Iraq, had name recognition and a huge financial advantage. McCain won the January primary in South Carolina and Graham used his endorsement in television ads.

Farther north, Democrats vied for the chance to pick up a seat in Virginia’s 11th Congressional District, where Republican moderate Davis is retiring after nearly 14 years. He represents suburbs in and around the Capital Beltway, including much of Fairfax County, the wealthiest in the nation.

The two leading Democratic candidates were longtime rivals. Gerry Connolly, chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, beat former Rep. Leslie Byrne, who held the seat for one term before losing it to Davis in the Republicans’ 1994 takeover of Congress.

Connolly won the four-way primary with about 56 percent of the vote, compared to about 34 percent for Byrne, according to unofficial vote tallies.

“It was a hard battle, there were outside interest groups that came in and you can see tonight that that was a big turnoff,” Connolly said.

In November, Connolly will face Republican Keith Fimian, a businessman making his first run for office.

Southern Maine’s 1st District, where Allen is giving up his seat, featured a hotly contested six-way Democratic race and a two-way Republican contest.

Chellie Pingree, a former Senate majority leader, won the Democratic primary while Charlie Summers, a former state senator who recently returned from duty with the Navy in Iraq, won the Republican race, according to unofficial vote totals.

And in Georgia, a political consultant defeated a national guardsman just back from a tour in Iraq in a runoff election to replace state Rep. Ron Sailor, who is facing prison time for money laundering. Dee Dawkins-Haigler had 54 percent of the vote, beating Malik Douglas.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham faced a long shot primary challenge Tuesday from a fellow Republican who has hammered his ties to Arizona Sen. John McCain.

In Virginia, early results showed a county official with a big lead over a former congresswoman in the bitter Democratic contest for the seat being vacated by retiring Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Davis.

And in Maine, Democrats chose between Rep. Tom Allen and political newcomer Tom Ledue in a U.S. Senate primary while both parties settled hard-fought races in the 1st Congressional District in the southern part of the state.

Graham challenger Buddy Witherspoon, a retired orthodontist and former Republican National Committee member, has criticized the one-term incumbent as too liberal for conservative South Carolina.

Graham has also taken heat from potential Democratic challengers on a failed illegal immigration measure he and McCain crafted.

Attorney Michael Cone and engineer Bob Conley were seeking the Democratic Party’s nod to run for Graham’s seat Tuesday. Graham’s immigration measure, which would have provided a path to citizenship, drew derision last year at the state GOP convention, and Cone and Conley both call the plan amnesty for illegal immigrants.

South Carolina resident Jamie Devane said his vote for Witherspoon Tuesday was a vote against Graham on the immigration issue.

“I just think it’s time to kick the people out who aren’t supposed to be here,” he said.

But Graham, an Air Force Reserve colonel who has served in Iraq, has name recognition and a huge financial advantage. McCain won the January primary in South Carolina and Graham has used his endorsement in television ads.

“I think he votes in our best interest, to take care of our troops and needing an actual immigration law instead of the way it is right now,” said retired construction worker Glenn Muskovin, who said he voted for Graham even though he doesn’t always agree with him. “He hasn’t wavered like a lot of politicians.”

Farther north, Democrats are hoping to pick up a seat in Virginia’s 11 Congressional District, where Republican moderate Davis is retiring after nearly 14 years. He represents suburbs in and around the Capital Beltway, including much of Fairfax County, the wealthiest in the nation.

The two leading Democratic candidates are longtime rivals. Gerry Connolly is chairman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors and former Rep. Leslie Byrne held the seat for one term before losing it to Davis in the Republicans’ 1994 takeover of Congress. With 30 percent of precincts reporting, Connolly had 57 percent of the vote, compared with 33 percent for Byrne. Two other Democrats trailed.

The primary winner will face Republican Keith Fimian, a businessman making his first run for office.

Voters in northern Virginia were also deciding nomination fights in two other congressional districts Tuesday.

In Maine, Allen, a six-term congressman from Portland, was favored to defeat Ledue, a high school administrator from Springvale, for the chance to challenge two-term Sen. Susan Collins. She was unopposed in the Republican primary.

Southern Maine’s 1st District, where Allen is giving up his seat, featured a hotly contested six-way Democratic race and a two-way Republican contest.

And in Georgia, a political consultant and a national guardsman serving in Iraq were in a runoff to replace a state lawmaker facing prison time for money laundering. The House seat representing an area east of Atlanta was vacated by state Rep. Ron Sailor, who pleaded guilty to laundering $375,000 in drug money for an undercover agent posing as a drug dealer.

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An angry and upset Rep. James Clyburn said Wednesday that his office has been deluged with nasty phone calls with racial overtones since his endorsement of Barack Obama a day earlier.

Clyburn told FOX News Radio’s “Brian and the Judge” that the callers identified themselves as Hillary Clinton supporters. Clyburn, an African-American and the third ranking House Democrat, said a white intern in his office was so upset by the calls that she had to be consoled by other workers and left the office early.

“We got more vitriolic, nasty phone calls, really racially tinged phone calls in my congressional office, so much so, until one of the interns, a young lady who is not a stranger to politics … and she is not a black person, she left the office, had to be consoled because of the kinds of phone calls from people who identified themselves as Hillary Clinton supporters,” he said.

Clyburn said some of the callers used “names that I would not repeat on this show today.”

“I was absolutely shocked, could not believe that this happened. I could understand people saying, ‘Why are you doing this or why would you not support Hillary Clinton?’ but to call me the kinds of names I have not heard since the ’40s and ’50s,” he said.

Clyburn said some of the callers threatened to “sabotage this election.” He added that he does not think Clinton understands her role in unifying the party.

“I’ve got a call in to Bob Johnson, a good buddy of mine, he’s a big supporter of Hillary Clinton, he’s now pushing for her to be on the ticket as VP. And I’m gonna tell him today they’d better really raise their voices because this kind of stuff is lethal,” Clyburn said.

The House majority whip later told FOX News that the nomination of a black man as a major party presidential candidate demonstrates the distance the United States has come in a short term.

“I think historically it means in the 60th year since Strom Thurmond walked out of the party on the issue of race, our party has decided that it’s time to turn the page on that issue in society,” he said referring to the late Dixiecrat turned Republican senator who was later discovered to have fathered a child with a black woman who worked as the family maid.

But Clyburn tempered his enthusiasm for Obama’s nomination, saying that there “are always pockets in this country of people who cannot find it in themselves to grow up. And to the extent which people fail to mature, we’ll still have some work to do.”

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Saturday: Barack Obama addresses supporters at a victory rally in Columbia, S.C., after winning the state's Democratic presidential primary.

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Barack Obama spent the better part of last year trying to counter criticism that he wasn’t “black enough”; now, following his rout of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in South Carolina, his detractors appear to be trying to cast him as the “black candidate” in the race.

Obama is doing his best not to be painted by anyone else’s brush, but in South Carolina, which he won 55 percent compared to Clinton with 27 percent and Edwards at 18 percent, in many ways he was forced by Clinton’s camp to make clear he is black.

Hoping to avoid falling into the pigeon hole created by conducting a campaign on a single issue, Obama gave a rousing victory speech Saturday night in which he did everything he could to transcend race while speaking directly to the undercurrent that drove much of the South Carolina battle.

“What we’ve seen in these last weeks is that we’re also up against forces that are not the fault of any one campaign, but feed the habits that prevent us from being who we want to be as a nation. It’s the politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon, a politics that tells us that we have to think, act and even vote within the confines of the categories that supposedly define us. The assumption that young people are apathetic. The assumption that Republicans won’t cross over. The assumption that the wealthy care nothing for the poor, and that the poor don’t vote. The assumption that African-Americans can’t support the white candidate; whites can’t support the African-American candidate; blacks and Latinos can’t come together,” he said.

“But we are here tonight to say that this is not the America we believe in. I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina. I saw South Carolina. … I saw what America is, and I believe in what this country can be. That is the country I see. That is the country you see. But now it is up to us to help the entire nation embrace this vision. Because in the end, we are not just up against the ingrained and destructive habits of Washington, we are also struggling against our own doubts, our own fears and our own cynicism,” Obama continued.

In this election of “viable” firsts — first viable woman candidate, first viable black candidate — South Carolina voters said they are confident the United States can look beyond race and gender.

FOX News exit polls showed that 77 percent of South Carolina voters said they think the country is ready to elect a black president and 76 percent said it is ready for a woman president. A large majority of voters said they’d be satisfied with either front-runner as the Democratic nominee.

But the race, in a lot of ways, did come down to race. No one asked directly, but if South Carolina voters based their decision on having the same skin color as the candidate, it would explain why 81 percent of black voters — who made up 53 percent of the electorate — chose Obama.

The polling also showed that 79 percent of black women who voted — 33 percent of the overall electorate — supported the Illinois senator over 19 percent who preferred the former first lady. Among white women, Clinton won by 44 percent to 34 percent for Edwards and 22 percent for Obama.

Notably, the public bickering between Obama and his opponent’s husband, Bill Clinton, may have hurt Hillary Clinton. Twenty-six percent of voters said Bill Clinton was very important in deciding their vote, and of those 46 percent backed Hillary Clinton and 43 percent Obama.

The Clinton campaign strategy had been to place Bill Clinton in South Carolina to capitalize on his strong relationship with African-Americans in the state while Hillary Clinton focused on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5 states. But not only did voters want to hear from the candidate, rather than her surrogate, in the run-up to the vote, Bill Clinton frequently got into verbal spars over his suggestive comments that Obama was running a campaign based on race.

“They are getting votes, to be sure, because of their race or gender. That’s why people tell me Hillary doesn’t have a chance of winning here,” the former president said while campaigning for his wife, leaving the impression that he thought blacks would not support a white alternative to Obama.

Asked about the vote results on Saturday night, the former president offered a curious comparison to an earlier era and contest.

“Jesse Jackson won South Carolina twice — in ‘84 and ‘88 — and he ran a good campaign, and Senator Obama has run a good campaign,” Bill Clinton said from Missouri, where he was campaigning for his wife. “He has run a good campaign everywhere. He is a good candidate with a good organization.”

The resentment toward Bill Clinton’s role in South Carolina was certainly evident at Obama’s Columbia, S.C., victory party, where supporters briefly booed images of the former president when he appeared on network news being broadcast into the room. The booing was quickly subdued as the campaign suggested it was in bad form.

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said that it’s ridiculous to try to force Obama into the role of “the black candidate” since he got nearly 25 percent of the white vote in South Carolina, won the minority-poor state of Iowa, picked up 20 percent more votes than Edwards in another minority-deprived state, New Hampshire, and carried rural Nevada.

“It would be an unfortunate spin” for others to claim Obama can only win because of black voters, Axelrod said. “It’s an attempt to marginalize that which cannot be marginalized.”

Unlike the spin out of the Clinton campaign, Obama has been unifying candidates and attracting a broader coalition of voters, Axelrod said.

“In these contests we’ve won more votes and delegates than she has. I’m sure that is a very frustrating realization for the Clinton campaign,” he said.

Clinton adviser Lanny Davis told FOX News that “the Clintons didn’t play the race card” though “there were certain moments, certain phrases that I wish they didn’t use.”

He said Clinton won Nevada by appealing to Latinos, blue collar and middle class workers and women, and will appeal to a broad base on Super Tuesday, the next contest that counts for Democrats. Tuesday’s Florida vote won’t allocate delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August. But civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton said, “Clearly a lot of African-Americans are very upset with the characterizations” of Obama as the “black candidate,” and whether the characterizations were “intended or not, they came off very badly.”

Sharpton said nothing can discredit Obama’s “tremendous victory” but “to be fair, Hillary Clinton did get some black votes today, more than I thought she would given the acrimony.”

FOX News analyst Susan Estrich added that she’s not sure a victory in South Carolina would help Obama around the nation. “I’ve been sitting here for 20 minutes and I’ve heard the words ‘race’ and ‘African Americans’ about 20,000 times. The question is how it’s going to play in the coming states,” Estrich said, watching the returns. She added that lots of hostility still remains between blacks and Latinos in California, who also make up a large part of the electorate there, and that could perpetuate the race factor.

“The one to win on Super Tuesday is the one who goes beyond the race issue,” Sharpton said.

Of course, winning the Democratic Party nomination is not just about engaging minorities but also about inspiring the electorate. Picking up a notable endorsement on Saturday, Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy, said she was supporting Obama because he can inspire Americans in the same way her father once did.

Kennedy wrote in a New York Times editorial that she never knew a president “who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them.” But Obama, she said, could be that man.

Click here to read The New York Times editorial by Caroline Kennedy.

Clinton currently leads in overall delegates, largely because of support from so-called superdelegates, power players in the party who can support whomever they chose.

Axelrod said recent endorsements for Obama from top Democrats in red states like Nebraska, North Dakota, and Missouri indicate they believe Obama can succeed on GOP turf.

“A lot of leaders in our party who haven’t chosen a candidate will be looking for a candidate who can carry the Democratic Party forward,” Axelrod said. “The question is who can win Republicans and independents and who can build a new Democratic majority. We think we offer that opportunity.”

“Either one of these candidates are going to go down to the finish line … and (the Democrats) will be a united party” in the general election, Davis said.

FOX News’ Major Garrett, Dana Blanton and Sharon Kehnemui Liss and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Saturday: John Edwards addresses supporters at a post-primary vote rally in Columbia, S.C. (AP Photo)

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With no victories to his name and a third place finish in South Carolina — his birthplace and the site of his only victory during his 2004 presidential campaign — John Edwards perseveres, but at a daunting disadvantage going into Super Tuesday, Feb. 5.

The Democratic underdog showed no sign of retreat Saturday night at his post-Democratic presidential primary vote rally in Columbia, S.C. Instead, he underscored his campaign theme of fighting for the middle class and pledged — as he has following previous defeats — to soldier onward.

Edwards has consistently said he’s in the race until the convention, and is holding out for the 22 states that host Democratic primaries and caucuses in 10 days.

“Now three of us move on to February 5, where millions of Americans will cast their votes and shape the future of the party,” Edwards said in an address that lasted less than 10 minutes and followed rival Barack Obama’s impassioned half-hour victory speech at his nearby headquarters.

“We’re giving a voice to all those Americans whose voices are not being heard, and their voices were heard today in South Carolina,” Edwards said.

Edwards travels next to Georgia, and has Missouri scheduled for Monday. Both states hold votes on Feb. 5.

But a strong showing in South Carolina was the goal as Edwards banked on the Palmetto State as his best chance to gain traction before facing down his opponents in such delegate-rich states as California and New York.

With 99 percent of precincts reporting in South Carolina, Edwards had 18 percent, nine points behind Hillary Clinton and well in back of Obama’s 55 percent. The third place raises questions about his role from here out in the campaign.

With Edwards pledging to stay in the race despite the odds, observers and even the campaign itself have acknowledged the possibility of playing a role in a brokered convention if the race is still too tight to call by then. Some have suggested he could be positioned to throw his support to Obama.

“I think that John Edwards could very well be the kingmaker,” Democratic strategist Tanya Acker told FOX News, noting that if Edwards were to carry a large number of delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August, even if he didn’t end up on top, he could influence the outcome there.

Edwards senior adviser Joe Trippi was quoted in Friday’s Wall Street Journal suggesting Edwards could be the decisive factor at the convention.”Edwards is the primary force keeping Clinton under 50 percent … Worst case? We go to the convention as the peacemaker, kingmaker, whatever you want to call it,” he said.

He told FOX News on Saturday that the candidate plans to stay in the race for the long run. “Yes, we do think there’s a chance that this (convention) could be brokered — slim chance– and we want to be there,” he said.

Trippi added that Edwards still has a shot at the nomination regardless of the Saturday’s vote. The former North Carolina senator is polling well in Oklahoma and Missouri, where Obama has yet to catch a tailwind, and a recent surge in online donations has given the campaign the funds it needs to continue. On top of that, Trippi argued that Edwards’ strong performance in the South Carolina debate last week began an upward momentum moving into the Feb. 5 contests, and full campaign teams are up and running in Missouri, Georgia, Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota.

“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” said Edwards spokesman Chris Kofinis. “This race has a long way to go.”

FOX News exit polling suggests Edwards still has some appeal among certain voting groups. The former North Carolina senator tied with Clinton among white voters. And polls showed that voters who thought the economy was doing fine and were in favor of a continued Iraq presence supported Edwards most frequently, suggesting the possibility of GOP crossover votes.

Senior adviser David Bonior said it’s possible Republicans participated in the open primary.

“There are a lot of Republicans who don’t like Hillary Clinton,” he said, adding that Edwards may also have retained some “native son” appeal.

FOX News’ Steve Brown and Cristina Corbin contributed to this report.