|
Clinton coasts to win in West Virginia |
|
By Sam Youngman
|
|
Posted: 05/13/08 07:32 PM [ET] |
|
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), who is facing increasingly long odds in her effort to wrest the Democratic nomination from Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), was projected to easily win the West Virginia primary Tuesday night. Polls leading up to the contest showed Clinton leading by wide margins and Obama effectively conceded the contest in the closing days. The race was called immediately after polls closed. Even though the Illinois senator made a swing through the state Monday, his campaign said in both internal and widely circulated preemptive memos that “there is no question Sen. Clinton is going to win by huge margins” in both West Virginia and next week’s contest in Kentucky. The Clinton campaign argued that Obama had no good reason to concede the state given some of his institutional advantages, including receiving the endorsements of Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Rep. Nick Rahall (D), and outspending the Clinton campaign there. “By every measure, the Obama campaign has waged an aggressive campaign in the Mountain State,” a Clinton campaign memo entitled “Why West Virginia Matters” stated Tuesday. The former first lady’s campaign argued in the memo that West Virginia “is used to picking winners,” and Clinton will no doubt use the win here to add to her argument that she competes stronger in swing states than Obama and noted in the memo noted that “every nominee has carried the state’s primary since 1976, and no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916.”
|
