Biden courts independent voters in S.C.

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - Sen. Joe Biden told South Carolina audiences on Sunday he expects to spend a lot of time campaigning in the state because the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination essentially will be determined by the first Southern primary.

"I think it's going to be over after South Carolina," Biden said. "I'm going to be spending a lot of time here."

That includes spending time courting independents in a state where voters don't register by party. "If the Democratic nominee cannot attract independents, Democrats cannot win," said Biden.

Stumping in the state's rural heartland, the senator from Delaware said Iraq remains the key issue.

"Iraq is sort of that boulder in the road that you have to move before you can get to the rest of the issues," Biden told a group at Coker College in Hartsville.

Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has advocated a plan to split Iraq into three regions controlled by Shia, Sunni and Kurdish interests.

Biden said he has more depth on foreign policy issues than other candidates, but would not put down any candidate in his own party.

In fact, he joked that he also may avoid trying to compliment his fellow Democrats.

Biden was criticized just days after getting into the race when he described Obama as the first mainstream black presidential candidate "who is articulate and bright and clean."

At a stop in Bennettsville, Biden called attention to that misstep after he was introduced as being "articulate."

"I'd highly recommend that your chairman start using the word eloquent instead of articulate," Biden joked, adding that his comments about Obama would be "the last time that I'm going to compliment anybody."

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SEASIDE, Ore. (AP) — Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential may be picking up steam in Oregon.

Giuliani, who leads in a number of recent national polls, easily won a straw poll Sunday among delegates to the Dorchester Convention, an annual gathering of influential Oregon Republicans. He picked up 60 votes from attendees, nearly twice that of his closest competitor, former Georgia Rep. Newt Gingrich, who finished with 35 votes.

Among the other marquee candidates, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has received endorsements from Oregon GOP party chair Vance Day and former gubernatorial candidate Kevin Mannix, pulled 23 votes. Arizona Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record) brought up the rear with 19 votes, though he has won the endorsement of Oregon's most prominent Republican, U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith (news, bio, voting record).

The Dorchester straw poll, while a small sampling, can be telling. In 2006, Portland lawyer Ron Saxton won the gubernatorial straw poll in a field of three candidates and went on to win the party's nomination.

Other candidates to place in the poll included former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, with eight votes and Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, with 10 votes.

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Associated Press writer Julia Silverman contributed to this article from Oregon.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070305/ap_on_el_pr/on_the_trail2008 [link]