by FOXNews.com
Published: 03-05-08
Hillary Clinton scored commanding victories in Ohio and Rhode Island Tuesday and squeaked out a narrow victory in Texas breaking rival Barack Obama’s 12-contest winning streak and breathing new life into her Democratic presidential campaign.
On the Republican side John McCain swept all four states voting Tuesday and clinched the GOP nomination leading Mike Huckabee to drop out of the race. With his victories McCain reached the 1191 delegates needed to ensure he becomes his party’s nominee.
That leaves the Democrats to continue their battle.
Obama won the lead-off Vermont primary Tuesday. But Clinton who was trailing by 110 delegates made a full court press to slow the Illinois senator in the other states and assure party leaders that she is not out of the fight. Texas held caucuses immediately after the primary and Obama was leading that race early on. The caucuses were responsible for awarding proportionally one-third of the state’s pledged delegates.
With her wide victory in Ohio Clinton started to make up ground in the delegate battle. Returns showed she had 55 percent to Obama’s 43 percent in the state which offers 141 pledged delegates.
“You know what they say — ‘As Ohio goes so goes the nation’ … This nation’s coming back and so is this campaign” Clinton told enthusiastic supporters at a rally in Columbus Ohio Tuesday night. “We’re going on we’re going strong and we’re going all the way.
“Ohio has written a new chapter in the history of this campaign and we’re just getting started” she said.
Obama spoke to supporters in San Antonio Texas unshaken by Clinton’s gains.
“No matter what happens tonight we have nearly the same delegate lead as we did this morning and we are on our way to winning this nomination” Obama said.
Rhode Island and Vermont have a small delegate payoff in comparison to Ohio and Texas where results are still being counted. Those two states could be decisive in shaping the balance of the Democratic race.
Texas had emerged as the key battleground for Democrats in late polling. The two candidates had traded the lead in Texas polls for the past two weeks. For Clinton a win there was considered crucial to keep her campaign afloat.
“You cannot overstate the importance of this evening” said Democratic strategist Julian Epstein. “(Clinton) had a near-death political experience from which she snatched victory.”
But Democratic strategist Bob Beckel warned against overstating the importance of Clinton’s victories predicting the New York senator would only pick up about 20 net delegates and still trail Obama.
“It still is a delegate game and the momentum she has generated has no place to go” he said.
Indeed the campaigns tried to spin the night to their strengths with Obama’s campaign issuing a statement that said Tuesday “was the Clinton campaign’s last best chance” to cut into Obama’s pledged delegate lead and it failed.
In fact said Obama spokesman Bill Burton “Clinton’s chances of regaining the delegate lead actually decreased tonight as the number of delegates remaining dwindles.”
But Clinton’s campaign had its own spin.
“Sen. Obama poured everything he had into scoring a decisive knockout and failed” the campaign said in a statement. “He outspent Hillary by a more than 2 to 1 margin and has — in the words of media analyst Howard Kurtz — ‘defied the laws of journalistic gravity.’ Despite these advantages he couldn’t close the deal with voters.”
In Ohio FOX News exit polls showed Clinton won favor with economy-minded voters who broke for her by a margin of 52-to-47 percent. Those voters were split evenly in Texas but the exit polls there showed Hispanics — a key voting bloc in Texas — were going for Clinton by a margin of 64-to-35 percent.
There were some kinks in the Ohio voting. A judge had ordered polling stations to remain open late in Sandusky and Cuyahoga counties where bad weather and apparent ballot shortages hampered the voting process. Questions had been raised however about the lack of evidence presented in Cuyahoga to warrant the late voting.
In Vermont Obama won across all areas and almost all groups and took 60 to 38 percent over Clinton in the polls. In Rhode Island Clinton won with 58 percent to Obama’s 40 percent.
The FOX News exit polls indicated Clinton was aided by some last-minute momentum ahead of the Illinois senator in three of four states. In Texas those voters who made their choice in the last three days picked Clinton over Obama by 66-to-34 percent.
Clinton’s fortunes seemed to have turned on a series of actions by her campaign over the last week. She struck at Obama in a Texas ad Friday asking voters who they want “answering the phone” in a crisis. The campaign followed up with an ad accusing him of being “too busy” to hold any oversight hearings for a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee and Clinton and her surrogates have consistently argued that the media was being soft on Obama.
Her campaign had already argued that Obama needed to sweep the Tuesday primaries or face renewed scrutiny from the Democratic Party. Obama had expected to hold on to his pledged delegate lead but indicated earlier in the day that the fight would go on after the night’s races were called.
Pennsylvania the biggest single prize left follows on April 22. Democrats vote in Wyoming and Mississippi over the coming week.
In Texas it is possible that Obama could lose the popular vote and still win more delegates. Areas with higher voter turnout in previous Texas elections are given proportionally more delegates in this year’s primary. Urban districts like Houston Dallas and Austin which generally have the higher turnout favored Obama.
It takes 2025 delegates to win the Democratic nomination and slightly more than 600 remained to be picked in the 10 states that vote after Tuesday. The four Super Tuesday II states were allocating 370 delegates total.
For Republicans 256 delegates were at stake Tuesday and McCain had been cautiously optimistic he would earn enough to reach the 1191 delegate threshold. He started the night with 1014.
The night marked an extraordinary comeback for a candidate whose White House hopes were dashed eight years ago and whose second bid was left for dead eight months ago.
“Tonight my friends we have won enough delegates to claim with confidence humility and a great sense of responsibility that I will be the Republican nominee” McCain told supporters in Dallas.
He said he will run a respectful general election campaign focusing on national security trade and other issues. Clinton and Obama both called McCain to congratulate him Tuesday.
“Like all campaigns it will have its ups and downs. But we will fight every minute of every day to make certain we have a government that is as capable wise brave and decent as the great people we serve” McCain said. “That is our responsibility and I will not let you down.”
In anticipation of sealing the nomination McCain plans to visit Republican National Committee headquarters Wednesday and the White House for the endorsement of President Bush.
Huckabee senior staffers told FOX News that the Bush endorsement accelerated their plans to withdraw from the race.
Huckabee said in Irving Texas that he has recognized McCain as the GOP nominee.
“I’d rather lose an election than lose the principles that got me into politics in the first place” Huckabee said. “We aren’t going away completely. We want to be a part of helping keep the issues alive that have kept us in this race.”
McCain took nearly 75 percent of the vote in Vermont and won all 17 delegates from the state. McCain also won 79 of the 85 delegates from Ohio and got 13 of Rhode Island’s 17 delegates. Texas had 90 delegates up for grabs and in late counting he won at least 69.
Huckabee had 257 delegates going into the day’s contests and had pledged repeatedly to tough it out until one candidate reaches the 1191 threshold. His campaign issued a statement offering its support in helping united the GOP ahead of the November general election.
FOX News’ Carl Cameron Major Garrett Bonney Kapp Serafin Gomez and Aaron Bruns and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
