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Hispanics boost Clinton in Nevada

BY GLENN THRUSH | glenn.thrush@newsday.com

9:43 PM EST, January 19, 2008

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. reacts with her husband, former President Clinton and their daughter Chelsea, to supporters after being declared winner of the Nevada Democratic caucus. (AP Photo / January 19, 2008)

LAS VEGAS - Hillary Rodham Clinton rode a wave of Hispanic support to defeat Barack Obama in a bitter and divisive Nevada caucus Saturday -- even as she attacked the state's voting procedures as undemocratic.

Clinton defeated Obama 51 to 45 percent, with John Edwards finishing a distant third with 4 percent. Due to a quirk in the rules, however, it wasn't clear if Clinton had won a majority of the state's delegates.

The victory gives Clinton a badly needed hedge against a possible loss next Saturday in the South Carolina Democratic primary -- and has Obama grappling for strategies to keep her from replicating her success in California on Feb. 5.

"I guess this was how the West was won," a hoarse Clinton told supporters in the ballroom of the Planet Hollywood hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

The Nevada campaign was the nastiest contest yet, with both sides exchanging allegations of dirty dealing. After the caucus sites closed, Obama campaign officials said they received 200 reports of polling problems, including eligible voters who were blocked from participating. His staff also released an automated recording of an answering machine in which the caller referred to his middle name, Hussein.

The Clinton campaign disavowed knowledge of the calls and Clinton called the new raft of charges "strange."

In a sign of a widening racial and ethnic divide in the Democratic party, Clinton won 64 percent of the Latino vote to Obama's 23 percent, according to entrance polls. Energizing Hispanic voters is an essential part of Clinton's strategy in California, aides have said.

For his part, the Illinois senator dominated among African-Americans, besting Clinton 79 percent to 16 percent, a trend that bodes well for him in South Carolina, where blacks are nearly half the electorate.

The Nevada results were a huge disappointment for Obama. He had counted on a large turnout from members of the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 to compensate for Clinton's strength among Hispanics. But that effort fizzled after Clinton and her surrogates charged union leaders with bullying her supporters in the local.

In the end, Clinton took six out of the nine casino-based caucus sites thought to be Obama strongholds.

"I am particularly grateful to all the members of the culinary union who stood for me," Clinton said. "... we will all be united in November."

It was hard to find much unity at caucus sites in Las Vegas, however. At polling sites like Caesars Palace, the Culinary Workers vote seemed to split along racial lines, with blacks comprising the majority of the Obama section, and whites and Hispanics forming the core of Clinton's support.

Clinton's operatives were able to pry many of the union's Latino members away from Obama by encouraging them to avoid the casino sites where they would be pressured by Obama boosters, according to a Clinton supporters.

Her workers "told the Hispanic supporters to vote in their home caucus sites or to just stay at home if they felt uncomfortable voting at the hotels," said Vincent Panvini, the political director for the Sheet Metal Workers International Association, which supported the New York senator.

An equally potent weapon was Bill Clinton, who prowled the plush carpets of the casinos like a pit boss this week to pump up enthusiasm for his wife.

The ferocious battle for votes continued minutes before the caucusing began at noon. Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, went from gambling table to vending booth, trying to pull workers from their shifts to support Clinton. "I can't leave right now," one Latino vendor within ear- and eyeshot of a reporter insisted in a pleading voice, as McEntee glared at him.

Even as she celebrated victory, Clinton criticized the caucus process for disenfranchising those who have to work during the two-hour voting process.

"I still have concerns about caucuses. ... They don't provide the broad base of participation I have fought for my entire life," she told reporters.

Letta Tayler contributed to this story.