By Mike Manzoni
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) won the Mississippi primary Tuesday, beating Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) in a primary which exit polls indicate was the most racially divided contest yet. Obama also beat Clinton in Wyoming earlier this week-erasing the dent she had made in the March 4 contests in Texas and Ohio.
Exit polls showed African-Americans overwhemingly favoring Obama-at more than 90 percent-while nearly three-quarters of white voters chose Clinton in Mississippi.
The Associated Press reported that only two other state contests this year were as racially divisive: Alabama and Arkansas, the latter being a former home state of Clinton when her husband, former President Bill Clinton, served as the state’s governor.
Obama’s win, in what is considered one of the most conservative southern states during the general election, comes as Obama’s victory in the caucus portion of the Texas “prima-caucus” was announced, a contest held on March 4.
Clinton won the state’s primary, but because of the caucus, Obama will actually score more delegates than she did in Texas.
More than 400,000 turned out in Mississippi, with nearly 61 percent voting for Obama and 37 percent choosing Clinton.
The Clinton camp is now eyeing the next major contest in late-April.
“We congratulate Senator Obama for his win in Mississippi and thank our supporters and…now we look forward to campaigning in Pennsylvania and around the country as this campaign continues,” said Clinton’s campaign manager Maggie Williams in a statement released after Clinton’s loss.
The rather light week of campaigning began with President Clinton saying a joint-ticket-his wife, Hillary Clinton being on top and Obama on the bottom-would be “unstoppable.”
“He would win the urban areas and the upscale voters. She would win the rural areas that we lost when President Reagan was president,” he said at a campaign stop in Pass Christian, Mississippi. “If you put those two things together, you’d have an almost unstoppable force.”
Obama did not agree.
“Senator Clinton is fighting hard. She’s tenacious. I respect her for that. She is working hard to win the nomination,” he said in his campaigning in Columbus, Miss. “But I want everybody to be absolutely clear. I’m not running for vice president. I’m running for president of the United States of America”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has not endorsed a candidate yet, said on NECN-television that a dream ticket of Clinton and Obama was now “impossible” due to Clinton’s comment that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the Republican nominee, would be a better commander in chief than Obama would.
The dirtier campaigning was done by surrogates for the candidates in the last week.
Samantha Power, a foreign policy adviser to Obama and contributing editor of Time Magazine, called Clinton a “monster” in an interview with a Scottish newspaper. The comment was followed immediately by the words “that is off the record,” possibly indicating Power realized what she was saying.
She later resigned from the campaign, releasing a letter stating: “I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor and purpose of the Obama campaign.”
Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman vice presidential candidate, said Obama was only in the place he was because he is black. She delivered a paid speech in Torrance, Calif., in which she was reported by the local newspaper, The Daily Breeze, as saying, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position.”
After the revelations, Ferraro resigned from her role as a fiance chair for the Clinton campaign. In an interview on NBC Nightly News on Wednesday, she disputed the notion of her comments.
“That is not what I said,” she told Ann Curry. “What I did was I was talking about the historic campaign. Why do you think it’s historic, do you think it’s because he’s the senator from Illinois? I think not.”