Romney cries foul over Huckabee victory in West Virginia
Hillary Clinton today challenged Mr Obama to no less than four televised debates this month, with her campaign saying voters needed see how the Democratic rivals measure up “side by side” rather than rely on “rallies and big events”.
It is usually candidates coming from behind that demand more debates, but aides insisted today that Mrs Clinton had no need of greater name recognition. Instead, she wanted to demonstrate – as she has done in the past – that she makes an “effective case”.
Her campaign believes Mr Obama has recently been getting a free ride from a largely uncritical media and suggested he says “things that go unchallenged” elsewhere.
If Mr Obama agrees to the debates, two will be take place over the next six days including one on Fox TV, a conservative-leaning channel previously spurned by Democratic presidential candidates.
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Mrs Clinton, who famously declared she found her voice when she won New Hampshire last month, appeared to be losing it again after cutting short an interview with a coughing fit. Howard Wolfson, her spokesman, later confirmed she was suffering from a dry throat, saying: “She has lost her voice to some measure.”
The strain is also being felt in her campaign finances, with insiders suggesting she raised roughly half Mr Obama’s $32 million last month. Both campaigns have spent over $50 million between them since Iowa’s caucuses on January 3.
Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama today predicted that Super Tuesday’s results will settle little in a Democratic presidential race that threatens to grind on into next month and beyond.
But this afternoon there were reports of problems with voting equipment in Los Angeles and Arizona which left many people unable to cast ballots.
Before voting near her home in New York – one of 24 states staging 43 Democratic and Republican contests in today’s unprecedented “national primary” – Mrs Clinton said: “We’re all kind of guessing about what it’s all going to mean because it’s never happened before.”
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Mr Obama said: “The fact that we’ve made so much progress I think indicates that we’ve got the right message, and the question is are we going to be able to pull some states out. No matter what happens though, we’re probably going to see a split decision tonight.”
In an electrifying race that will see either a black man or white woman as a US presidential candidate, the pair headed into the Democratic contest with Mr Obama having apparently wiped out Mrs Clinton’s double-digit leads in national polls, as well as in critical states such as California, New Jersey and Missouri.
The two campaigns are already beginning to focus on fresh battles in six states more over the next week. But they are also looking further ahead, to two critical contests in delegate-rich Ohio and Texas on March 4 – or even beyond, to the Pennsylvania primary on April 22.
Mr Wolfson said he was confident that Mrs Clinton would emerge from tonight’s votes narrowly ahead of Mr Obama in the race for delegates. But he conceded her lead could be reliant on the votes of “super delegates” – party officials who have already pledged their support to Mrs Clinton.
In a further sign of their unease, the Clinton camp repeated call for delegates awarded to her in Michigan and Florida, currently banned from this summer’s nominating convention in Denver, to have their voting rights restored.
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Mr Wolfson predicted the results tonight “would be diverse and inconclusive”, partly because Democratic rules ensure delegates are awarded proportionately in each state instead of the “winner-takes-all” basis which operates in many Republican contests.
“This is just another step – a large step – on the road to the White House,” he added, before conceding that the result in California, once regarded as locked in for Mrs Clinton, is “going to be very close”.
Republican eyes were also looking to California, the most populous state in America. If Mr Romney does well in the Golden State - even wins it - he will almost certainly press on in his effort to slow John McCain’s frontrunner status. Their next contests are this weekend in Kansas, Louisiana and Washington State.
The first result today showed Mr Romney narrowly losing out in West Virginia’s presidential nominating convention where Mike Huckabee won all 18 delegates. Supporters of John McCain voted almost en bloc for Mr Huckabee to prevent Mr Romney from scoring an early victory.
Mr Romney’s camp later accused his two opponents of cutting “a backroom deal” in which Mr McCain’s campaign had allegedly called his supporters after an initial ballot and urged them to vote in favour of Mr Huckabee.
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At the convention, Mr Romney had warned that Mr McCain’s support for global warming curbs “would effectively kill coal” – a key industry in the state. This is one of several positions which conservative commentators such as Rush Limbaugh have claimed put the Republican frontrunner at odds with the party’s core support.
Mr McCain, speaking at a rally in New York where he entered to the theme tune of “Rocky”, attacked Mr Romney for having a “terrible record” as governor of Massachusetts. “I have the judgment and the experience to lead this nation in the transcendental challenge of the 21st century, and that’s the struggle against radical Islamic terrorism,” he said.