Huckabee Easily Wins Republican Caucuses In Kansas
Chris Maddaloni for The New York Times
Mike Huckabee greeting supporters Saturday at the University of Maryland. Mr. Huckabee said he would remain in the presidential race.
By KATE ZERNIKE and PAUL VITELLO
Published: February 9, 2008
Mike Huckabee won the Kansas caucuses by a wide margin Saturday, showing he is still attracting voters even as the majority of the Republican Party is beginning to coalesce around John McCain as the nominee.
Both the Republicans and the Democrats, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, were competing in caucuses in Washington and primaries in Louisiana on Saturday. Democrats were also holding caucuses in Nebraska and the Virgin Islands.
On the Democratic side, both campaigns were giving the advantage to Mr. Obama, who has done well in caucuses, and among black voters, who make up a large chunk of the electorate in Louisiana.
Still, the Democratic contests were expected to do little to settle the muddle that resulted after Super Tuesday, the wave of coast-to-coast contests that a year ago was expected to be a kind of crowning for the party’s nominee.
With the Democratic contest so close, excitement ran high, as did turnout. In Washington, the Democratic Party reported record-breaking numbers of caucus-goers, with early totals suggesting turnout would be nearly be nearly double what it was in 2004 — itself a record year — when 100,000 Democrats caucused.
In Nebraska, the Web site of the Omaha World-Herald reported that organizers at two caucus sites were so overrun by crowds that they abandoned traditional caucusing and asked voters to drop makeshift scrap-paper ballots into a box instead. Traffic backed up on Highway 370 in Sarpy County, south of Omaha, when thousands of voters showed up at a precinct where organizers had planned for hundreds.
In Louisiana, preliminary results of a survey of voters leaving their polling places showed that nearly half of those casting ballots were black. As a group, African-Americans have overwhelmingly favored Obama in earlier primaries, helping him to victories in South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia.
One in seven Democratic voters and about one in 10 Republicans said Hurricane Katrina had caused their families severe hardship from which they have not recovered.
There was another indication of the impact the storm had on the state. Early results suggested that northern Louisiana accounted for a larger share of the electorate than in the past, presumably the result of the decline of population in the hurricane-battered New Orleans area.
The exit poll was conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for The Associated Press and the television networks.
Earlier in the day, Mr. Huckabee told reporters he had no intention of dropping out until one of the Republican candidates amassed the 1,191 delegates needed to be the nominee. He made the comment at a news conference after he spoke to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.
Mr. McCain is far enough ahead in the delegate race coming out of Super Tuesday that his advisers have said it would be all but impossible for anyone else to win the nomination. The other chief contender, Mitt Romney, bowed to those odds when he suspended his campaign on Thursday. But Mr. Huckabee, a pastor before he became governor of Arkansas, said, “I didn’t major in math. I majored in miracles, and I still believe in them, too.”
Asked if he saw any cost to staying in the race, Mr. Huckabee thought for a moment before answering: no.
“I have nothing else to do,” he said with a smile.
Mr. McCain’s campaign said the results on Saturday made little difference. “Our campaign fully expected to fall short in the Kansas caucus,” said a spokeswoman, Jill Hazelbaker. “John McCain is the presumptive nominee in this race and our path forward is unchanged by today’s results. Our focus remains the same: uniting the Republican Party to defeat Democrats in 2008.”
Not wanting to take the race for granted, Mr. McCain had given up plans to travel to a security conference in Germany over the weekend. Instead, he spent Friday campaigning in Kansas as well as Washington, which was also holding caucuses Saturday, and Virginia, where the primary is Tuesday.
Still facing fierce resistance from prominent conservatives, Mr. McCain was spending Saturday making phone calls in an effort to line up more endorsements and unite the party behind him.
Mr. McCain has 703 delegates so far, Mr. Huckabee, 190, and Ron Paul, a former congressman from Texas, 42.
On the Democratic side, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama had shadowed each other Friday campaigning in Washington, the biggest prize of the day. Mr. Obama had scored a last minute endorsement from the Democratic governor, Christine Gregoire, but Mrs. Clinton had the endorsements of both the state’s senators, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray.
On Saturday, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama switched coasts, campaigning in Maine, which holds its caucuses on Sunday.
With the Saturday events, 29 of the 50 states have selected delegates for the Democratic Party, according to The Associated Press.
Two others, Michigan and Florida, held renegade primaries and the Democratic National Committee has vowed not to seat any delegates chosen at either of them.
Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia and voting by Americans overseas are next, on Tuesday. Then follows a brief intermission, followed by a string of election nights, some crowded, some not.
The date of March 4 looms large, with 370 delegates in primaries in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont.
On the campaign trail in Lewiston, Me., on Saturday, Mrs. Clinton continued to emphasize that her health care package made her a better contrast, and thus a better opponent, to Mr. McCain.
On the day before the Maine Democratic caucuses, Clinton disparaged Mr. Obama as being soft on the issue of health care, an issue she has made a centerpiece of her campaign.
“I am the only candidate left in this race on either side who is committed to universal health care,” she said. “It is a core value, it is a human right. It is not a privilege.”
She characterized Mr. McCain, as a tough opponent, but one who would not make it as much of a priority to withdraw from the war in Iraq.
“He will be a formidable candidate on national security, on national defense,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I disagree with him. But we’ve got to have someone who can stand there on that stage and take him on.”
Mrs. Clinton added that if Mr. McCain were elected, “I don’t know how long we will be in Iraq.”
She also spoke highly of John Edwards, who dropped out of the race before the Super Tuesday primaries.
“I want to compliment Senator Edwards, who is a fighter,” Mrs. Clinton said. “There is a lot that John and I have in common. And I intend to ask John Edwards to be a part of anything I do.”
A campaign spokeswoman said that Mrs. Clinton was not necessarily naming Edwards as a running mate in the event of her nomination.
Mr. Obama, also campaigning in Maine, looked ahead to the general election, criticizing Mr. McCain, without mentioning his Democratic rival.
Mr. McCain initially “stood up to George Bush and opposed his first cuts,” Mr. Obama said at Nicky’s Diner in Bangor, The Associated Press reported. Now the senator is calling for continuing those tax cuts, which grant significant breaks to high-income taxpayers, “in his rush to embrace the worst of the Bush legacy.”
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers spent Friday trying to lower expectations for her performance not just in the Washington caucuses, but in nominating contests throughout February.
“The states in play this month do favor Senator Obama,” said Howard Wolfson, a Clinton spokesman, during a conference call with reporters. He cited Mr. Obama’s endorsements and his lead in the polls in states like Virginia. “We feel considerably better about the states on March 4.”
Kate Zernike reported from New York and Paul Vitello from Washington. Steven Lee Myers and David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting from Washington and Joel Elliott from Lewiston, Me..
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