WP, pg1: Feb. 5 Primaries to Pose A Super Test of Strategy
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 15, 2008; Page A01
After the trench warfare of Iowa and New Hampshire and the upcoming skirmishes in a handful of states, a very different battle awaits the presidential candidates on Feb. 5: the biggest and most challenging single day in a recent campaign for a party nomination. Democrats will hold contests in 22 states and one territory, with 1,681 delegates at stake. On that day alone, 52 percent of all pledged delegates will be awarded, compared with the 4 percent that will have been allocated in the four opening competitions of the year. Republicans have scheduled contests in 21 states for Feb. 5, known as Super Tuesday, with 975 delegates at stake. Those delegates make up 41 percent of the total available, according to the Republican National Committee.
No campaign, no matter how flush with money, can afford full-scale operations in that many states. By one estimate, the cost of a standard run of television advertising in each of the states for a week would be about $35 million...."We've always had a mega-Tuesday, but it's gotten larger and a lot more complex," said Donna Brazile, who managed Democrat Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000. She said candidates must figure out how to introduce themselves to voters who have paid only limited attention to the campaign, as opposed to those in Iowa and New Hampshire. Beyond that, they must decide which states to compete for aggressively. Finally, she said, candidates will have to know how to pick up delegates even in states in which a challenger has the upper hand....
Clinton and her two main Democratic competitors -- Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and former senator John Edwards (N.C.) -- are approaching Feb. 5 in strikingly different ways than the Republicans are. In part, that is because the rules for allocating delegates are different, with Republicans holding many contests. In a lot of the Republican competitions, the winner of a state or a congressional district is awarded all delegates. For Democrats, delegates are distributed proportionally on the basis of the votes for each candidate. That means that if Edwards remains a force through Feb. 5 and wins 15 percent of the vote in most contests, Clinton and Obama will need enormous margins to rack up a significant advantage in delegates....
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Clinton's aides said four states will be critical in their planning: New Jersey and neighboring New York, where the candidate has a home-court advantage; California, where the Clinton name has been popular and where Latino voters may give her a boost; and Arkansas, where she was first lady in the 1980s. Those states account for 44 percent of delegates awarded on Super Tuesday. Obama's Feb. 5 base begins with his home state of Illinois, but his campaign hopes to demonstrate broad national appeal by winning states in areas where Democrats normally struggle. The team is also looking to translate its first-place finish in Iowa to six states with caucuses on Feb. 5. The largest are Colorado, Kansas and Minnesota. But the campaign also is active in North Dakota, where Obama operates three offices; in Alaska, where he has two; and in Idaho, where he has one.
Edwards campaign manager David Bonior said the former senator has strength in such states as California, Georgia, Mississippi, North Dakota and Oklahoma. Edwards will visit four of those states beginning later this week....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/14/AR2008011402926_pf.html
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