CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Updated Jan. 20, 2008 – 12:18 a.m.
Clinton Claims Nevada Victory, While Obama Tries His Hand at Spin
By Marie Horrigan, CQ Staff
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won a close but clear-cut win in Saturday’s Nevada Democratic presidential caucuses. The former first lady pulled in just more than half the votes with nearly all precincts reporting and held a lead of several percentage points over her chief rival for the nomination, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama .
Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards , who is fighting an increasingly uphill battle to stay in the running, finished well out of contention in Nevada.
Clinton secured 50.7 percent of the delegates for the next step in the process leading to the Democratic state convention on April 19 — which is the measure by which Nevada Democrats calculated the outcome of Saturday’s caucuses — to 45.2 percent for Obama.
Given the closeness of the outcome and the fact that Democratic rules call for proportional distribution of national convention delegates, the 25 that were on the line Saturday would inevitably be split evenly between the candidates. But the Obama campaign caused a stir by spinning the outcome into a win for its candidate — claiming he had clinched 13 of the state’s national convention delegates to 12 for Clinton, based on the fact that he performed well around the state while Clinton’s overall lead was built on her big edge in Clark County (Las Vegas), the state’s major population center.
Both the Clinton campaign and the state Democratic Party disputed Obama’s claim, noting that no national convention delegates were actually allocated on the basis of Saturday’s results, only the first stage in a multi-step process.
Clinton’s victory in the overall Saturday voting enable her to share Nevada caucus bragging rights with Republican Mitt Romney , the former governor of Massachusetts, who cruised to an easy win in the state’s GOP caucuses held earlier Saturday. A more competitive outcome is expected in Saturday’s third presidential campaign event, the Republican primary in South Carolina, where polls are scheduled to close at 7 p.m.
Edwards, the 2004 Democratic vice presidential nominee, trailed far behind the front-runners with 4 percent of the vote. The result, coming on the heels of his mediocre third-place showing behind Clinton and Obama in the New Hampshire primary Jan. 8, will intensify the “must win” situation in which Edwards finds himself in the run-up to the next Democratic voting event, the South Carolina primary next Saturday. Edwards, who carried South Carolina in his short-lived bid for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, was born in the state and represented its neighbor to the north in the Senate.
The two other candidates, both severe longshots, barely registered. Ohio Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich held just 4 of the 10,319 state convention delegates allocated in incomplete returns, and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel had none. There were 31 delegates selected as “uncommitted.”
Clinton was carried to victory by a big percentage and numerical advantage in Las Vegas and the rest of Clark County, at the state’s southern tip, home to more than half of the state’s population. With about 90 percent of Clark precincts reporting, Clinton won 55 percent to 44 percent for Obama in the county, which was allotted roughly 70 percent of the state convention delegates.
She accomplished this despite a dispute over the siting of at-large precincts in nine casinos along the Las Vegas strip — an arrangement that some argued would benefit Obama, who had won the endorsement of the key Culinary Workers union in a city and state where the hotel, gambling, restaurant and entertainment industries are the major economic engines. The Nevada State Education Association, which backed Clinton, sued to block the use of those precincts. But a state judge ruled Thursday in favor of the state Democratic Party, which said the at-large precincts would create a better opportunity for caucus participation by shift workers employed within 2.5 miles of the casinos, who might not be able to return to their home precincts to caucus.
Despite concerns with the Clinton camp about the situation, she carried seven of the nine “casino precincts.”
Obama nonetheless did perform well across a wide swath of Nevada, including the counties that make the major population center in northern Nevada: Washoe, which includes the city of Reno, and Carson City County, where most residents live in the eponymous state capital city. Overall, Obama had the lead in 10 of the state’s 17 counties with nearly all the returns in.
Edwards’ best performance Saturday was in lightly populated Eureka County in the middle of the state, where he tied Clinton for second place with 26 percent of the delegates. Obama finished first there with 49 percent.
Clinton sent out a victory thank-you note to supporters and attributed her win to a strong message on economic issues. “People across the country are placing their faith in our campaign, especially those hardest hit by the recent downturn in the economy. We can’t let them down. We’re working together to bring about change, and America is responding to our efforts,” she said in the message, which was posted on her campaign Web site.
First posted Jan. 19, 2008 5:57 p.m.
Comments
It is a sad day.
I wish the caucus states would publish the raw votes. Theses states use a complicated formula that distorts the actual vote, which would be the standard in the general election. This is why caucuses are so undemocratic. There is no one-man, one-vote here. Votes are not taken by secret ballot. Clinton could have won by a larger margin of individual voters than suggested by the delegates won result. I wish someone would have the courage to lead a fight at the national convention to prohibit this undemocratic process in Democratic primary elections.
I am so happy that Hillary won in Nevada . I hope the voters in S.C. vote for Hillary. Heres to you Hillary ,go be the winner in S.C. Then just maybe Obama and Edwards will just drop out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Marie, seems that Clinton faces that 48% disapproval number in the primary as well as at large. What stands out is that although the Clintons have been campaigning for much longer than Obama, that they cannot get a decisive victory. Obama has out messaged, out organized, out worked them at the campaign level. She has now "won" two elections and fallen behind in delegates. As Bush 2004 showed, it is all about the delegates--not the overall vote. HRC's weak performance in the "red counties" of Nevada does not bode well for her hopes in the general election.
Wow, talk about "sour grapes". Somehow I doubt that had Obama won the actual vote in Nevada, the issue of delegate count would have even come up. You've lost the last 2 contests (arguably 3 if you count Michigan), buddy, and that's a fact. In fact, it's become clear at this point that Obama only wins African American voters (he's now the marginalized "black candidate"; never mind that his mother is white) and is behind Clinton by a substantial margin with every other group. This means he'll win S.C., but lose most states on Super Tuesday (making early delegate counts irrelevent). I am an active Democrat and I'm starting to really dislike Barack Obama just about more every day. He gives these impassioned speeches about "hope" and "change" and yet his campaign uses the same old tired, cynical, misleading double-standard spin tactics that the most corrupt campaigns have been using for years. He's proving himself to be the epitome of "same old" rather than anything new. At this point, if Clinton doesn't win the nomination, I may not even vote for the Democrat.
Obama cannot have it both ways - He cannot posture to be positive and then his rhetoric is negative. He mocks, he snipes, he spins, he mischaracterizes his rivals. Of course he can say they're doing it to him as well. But the difference is they did not make a pretentious "battle cry" out of "positive change" and did not posture themselves as "holier than thou". Obama did. That makes it a greater calling for him to mean what he says and to say what he means.
The only reason clinton won was because her husband was playing dirty politics- and still despite that, she lost delegates who matter anyway. Clintons' have been lying for more than two decades now; despite all those lies, Obama is still gaining ground. Tell Bill to back off and see whether his wife will ever win anywhere- including NY. That is the only reason she is running anyway, because she is the wife not because of her capabilites. GO OBAMA
POST A COMMENT
Oops! The following errors must be addressed: