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Candidates now look to Super Tuesday

BY DAN JANISON | dan.janison@newsday.com

January 9, 2008

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Now that the major parties have produced one winner each in two key early primary states, the trek resumes to make-or-break Super-Duper Tuesday in less than a month.

While different in crucial ways, last night's "comeback" victories for Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) underscore how early in the primary process it all remains.

Just last week, in Iowa, the stars of the moment were Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Republican Mike Huckabee of Arkansas. Obama landed second and Huckabee third, just ahead of Rudy Giuliani and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

Before the month is out come the Michigan, Nevada, South Carolina and Florida contests, all a runup to the "super" day on Feb. 5 that New York, California, Illinois and other major states go to the polls.

One question is how long certain changes will last. For two days, there was talk of turmoil in the Clinton camp and of staff changes to come.

Unlike her fellow New Yorker, Rudy Giuliani -- who despite campaigning in New Hampshire yielded a meager 9 percent behind key rivals McCain, Huckabee and Mitt Romney -- Clinton seemed drawn into valuing early-state results.

Giuliani's strategy downplays the early states as delegate-poor.

But if Clinton's campaign got a jolt, it was from perception, momentum and suprise, not from the raw number of convention delegates yielded from this early primary.

Clinton's edge in the vote was 39 to 36 percent (with 17 percent for ex-Sen. John Edwards, who despite a third-place finish declared his intent to push on in the race). She won by only about 6,000 votes. And so, Clinton and Obama each won 9 delegates in New Hampshire's Democratic primary -- followed by Edwards with four, according to an Associated Press analysis of primary results. All 22 of New Hampshire's delegates to the national convention this summer have thus been allocated.

Clinton and Obama won the same number of delegates -- even though Clinton edged Obama amid such fanfare -- because New Hampshire awards delegates proportionally, and the vote was so close, according to the AP.

So far, nationally, Clinton leads with 187 delegates, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as superdelegates. She is followed by Obama with 89 and Edwards with 50.

But the totals are extremely slim -- compared to the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination. Due to the primary calendar, the numbers are similarly thin so far on the Republican side, leading Giuliani to stress what he likes to call his "proporational" strategy.

Clinton addressed supporters shorty after 11 p.m.

"I come tonight with a very very full heart," she told cheering supporters. "...I found my own voice. I felt like we all spoke from our hearts and I'm so gratified that you responded."

She adopted some of her rivals' anti-corporate rhetoric and said "It's time we had a president who stands up for all of you...We are in it for the long run, and that is because we are in it for the American people."

"We came back tonight because you spoke loudly and clearly."

Obama addressed his supporters and congratulated Clinton shortly before 11 p.m.

"In record numbers you came out and you spoke up for change," he said. "There is something happening in America... We are ready to take this country in a fundamentally new direction." He spoke of "our new American majority."

"Nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change," Obama said. "In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope...We are not as divided as our politics suggest."

Edwards, conceding New Hampshire with about 17 percent, indicated he will not give up. "Forty-eight states to go!" he told cheering supporters. He appealed to the "99 percent who have not yet been heard in this democracy to join us in this grass-roots campaign."