Roller-coaster White House race heads south

[Ron Burgundy]

AFP - White House hopefuls looked Sunday to their next nominating contests, with little time for Republican John McCain and Democrat Hillary Clinton to savor their key weekend wins.

McCain was setting his sights on the January 29 Florida Republican primary after winning the South Carolina primary with 33 percent of the vote over former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on 29.9 percent.

But even though national polls have put Arizona Senator McCain in front of Huckabee for the Republican nomination to contest the November 4 presidential elections, the race is far from over.

McCain, now with two states under his belt, remained wary of trumpeting his status as the front-runner. But he noted that since 1980 South Carolina has picked every eventual Republican nominee for the White House.

"I think we're doing very well. I'm optimistic about doing well in Florida," he told CNN.

"For the last 28 years, the candidate that has won South Carolina has been the nominee of the party. So, we're taking it all the way to the bank."

Yet McCain still faces a tough fight in Florida against former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has staked his whole candidacy on winning the Florida race.

And former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who has so far scooped more delegates to the party's national convention in September than McCain, is also still in the fight, touting his differences over McCain especially on the economy.

"I think if people want somebody who has been in Washington all their life and understands Washington's ways and has been part of the Washington scene for a quarter of a century, then John McCain will be their person," he told Fox News.

"If they want somebody instead who's been in the real economy over the last 25, 30 years, who understands why jobs come and why they go and understands what it takes to grow an economy, then I think I'll be their person."

On the Democratic front, Clinton and Barack Obama turned toward a tough showdown in South Carolina, where Democrats vote for their presidential nominee on January 26, with both vying for the support of African American voters.

After topping Obama 51 percent to 45 percent in Nevada's Democratic caucuses Saturday, Clinton was the clear front-runner after her earlier win in New Hampshire.

But polls have shown that South Carolina's blacks, who count for half of the party's voters, are leaning toward Obama, bidding to become the country's first African-American president.

On Sunday, Clinton picked up the endorsement of influential black pastor Calvin Butts from the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, on the eve of the national holiday celebrating African-American icon Martin Luther King.

Both Butts and Clinton emphasized outside the New York church that the Democratic choice should not be about race.

"A vote for Hillary is not a vote against Barack Obama or any community be it African-American, Latino and others for that matter," Butts said.

"A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to elect someone who has proven through time to me and to this community and this country that she has the experience to make things happen and the vision to return us to a place of prosperity."

Clinton also praised Obama, saying: "I don't think that any of us could have ever expected, although many of us would certainly pray for, the day when we had a choice like the one we have in the Democratic nominating process."

But, she added, trumpeting her own experience in government: "I hope that this election remains focused on the big challenges that confront us."

Obama, who may have pipped Clinton in the number of delegates won in Nevada, sang the praises of King while calling for greater national unity Sunday in a church address in Atlanta, Georgia -- another state with a large black Democratic segment.

"Every day, our politics fuels and exploits ... division across all races and regions; across gender and party," he said.

"Dr. King understood that unity cannot be won on the cheap; that we would have to earn it through great effort and determination. That is the unity -- the hard-earned unity -- that we need right now."

Both parties are looking ahead to "Super Tuesday" on February 5 when more than 20 states will be up for grabs, including Georgia.

US-vote-2008,2ndlead-WRAP

Still-unsettled US White House races head to next state contests

by Porter Barron

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (AFP) - White House hopefuls looked Sunday to their next nominating contests, with little time for Republican John McCain and Democrat Hillary Clinton to savor their key weekend wins.

After grabbing the winner-takes-all victory in South Carolina's Republican primary with a 33 percent share of the vote over former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's 29.9 percent, Senator McCain, Sunday demurred from front-runner status and looked to coming state contests, including Florida on January 29.

"I think we are obviously doing very well in the national polls and in Florida we are ahead, but I still think this is very competitive," he told reporters, even though he now has two important state victories under his belt.

"Reality is, (winning here) helped us a very great deal. It's important. The South is very important to any Republican presidential candidate," McCain said.

In Nevada's caucuses Saturday, the former first lady seeking to become the first woman US president won 51 percent of the popular vote in the Nevada caucuses, against 45 percent for Illinois senator Barack Obama. John Edwards trailed with just under four percent.

"This is one step on a long journey throughout the country as we put our cases forward and take that case to the people, and this was an especially wonderful day for me," Clinton told cheering supporters.

But in a sign of how tight the race is, Obama's campaign contended that he had in fact won more Nevada delegates to the national convention that will choose the Democrats' presidential nominee in the November election.

McCain buried the ghosts of his 2000 primary defeat here, when he lost to George W. Bush after a battle poisoned by smears that were low even for South Carolina's no-holds-barred politics.

Both parties are looking ahead to "Super Tuesday" on February 5 when more than 20 states will be up for grabs.

Clinton's fresh triumph over Obama gives her campaign a shot of energy ahead of South Carolina holds its crucial Democratic primary next Saturday.

Obama, who beat Clinton in Iowa at the start of the 2008 race only to see her come back in New Hampshire, pledged that his bid to be the country's first black president was far from over.

"We ran an honest, uplifting campaign in Nevada that focused on the real problems Americans are facing, a campaign that appealed to people's hopes instead of their fears," he said.

"That's the campaign we'll take to South Carolina and across America in the weeks to come, and that's how we will truly bring about the change this country is hungry for."

Also Saturday, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney easily won Nevada's Republican caucus with more than 51 percent of the vote, adding to his victories in Michigan and Wyoming, after his rivals spurned the state in favor of South Carolina.

On Sunday he said the choice between him and McCain was clear as he highlighted the flagging US economy, likely to be a key issue this year.

"I think if people want somebody who has been in Washington all their life and understands Washington's ways and has been part of the Washington scene for a quarter of a century, then John McCain will be their person," he told Fox News.

"If they want somebody instead who's been in the real economy over the last 25, 30 years, who understands why jobs come and why they go and understands what it takes to grow an economy, then I think I'll be their person."

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080120/pl_afp/usvote2008 [link]