Search Engine Optimization, Blog Design, Movable Type Customization, and more.
My Sites:
As published by MSNBC.com:
Utah, Idaho, Hawaii voting today
But Kerry, Edwards keep focus on 'Super Tuesday'MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 11:40 a.m. ET Feb. 24, 2004
Voters head to the polls in Utah today, and caucuses in Hawaii and Idaho, in pit stops on the way to next week’s main event of the nominating season, “Super Tuesday.”
A total of 61 delegates are on the line in the three states today, 20 in Hawaii, 18 in Idaho and 23 in Utah. But Democratic front-runner Sen. John Kerry and his chief rival, Sen. John Edwards, have spent little time wooing voters there, focusing instead on the 10 states where voting will occur March 2, putting 1,151 delegates up for grabs.
Kerry will spend more than $1 million this week — nearly five times as much as Edwards — to run campaign ads in media markets in Ohio, Georgia and New York, which vote next week, aides said. Edwards has bought about $270,000 of ad time in those states thus far.
Edwards was campaigning Tuesday in Atlanta with Georgia lawmakers. Kerry was in Ohio, touring a closed steel mill with laid-off workers and talking with workers at a revitalized factory. Other states voting next week are California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Vermont.
Today, large voter turnouts are expected in Utah and Idaho, according to officials, but a Democratic Party official in Hawaii says the appearance of a well-known state resident on the show “American Idol” may hold down turnout at the caucuses there.
Kerry, from Massachusetts, is hoping to deliver a knockout blow to Edwards, of North Carolina, in the delegate-rich Super Tuesday contests. And a new poll released Tuesday showed that he leads the race for California’s 370 delegates by 32 points over Edwards.
Kerry gets 56% to 24% for Edwards
The Los Angeles Times poll showed Kerry with 56 percent to 24 percent for Edwards.
California’s delegates are the biggest prize of Super Tuesday. Together, the March 2 states offer more than half of the 2,162 delegates needed to win the presidential nomination are at stake.
The Times poll found that almost half of the likely primary voters surveyed were influenced by the fact that Kerry was victorious in 15 of the first 17 contests.
Many analysts see the March 2 voting as the last chance for Edwards to prove his electability and keep his campaign alive. He bills himself as the only Democrat who can beat President Bush in the South but he has won only one state in the region so far, South Carolina, the state of his birth.
Edwards lost Tennessee and Virginia. He is now looking to Georgia, along with Ohio and New York, to keep his campaign afloat.
“He needs to defeat Kerry in Georgia, otherwise the rationale for his campaign collapses,” Emory University political science professor Merle Black said.
Buoyed by a better-than-expected second-place finish in Wisconsin, Edwards wasted little time in launching his Georgia campaign but steered clear of calling the state one he must win.
Commanding delegate lead
Going into Tuesday’s voting, Kerry held a commanding delegate lead, 608 to 190 for Edwards.
“Looking ahead, unless something really blows up, John Kerry will be the nominee,” said Richard Ray, the spokesman for organized labor in Georgia as state president of the AFL-CIO, which has backed Kerry.
Meanwhile, President Bush, casting aside his desire to appear above the political fray, struck back at his Democratic critics Monday, portraying Kerry as a waffler and warning that Democrats would raise taxes, expand government and fail to lead decisively on national security.
Bush had hung back for months, despite constant pummeling by the Democratic presidential candidates. But he leveled his sharpest criticism yet at his rivals in a speech Monday night. Bush recalled terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, signaling his willingness to use the strikes for political gain, which his aides long had promised would not be done.
“September the 14th, 2001, I stood in the ruins of the Twin Towers. I remember a lot that day,” Bush told 1,400 Republican donors at a fund-raiser for GOP governors, recalling his trip to New York after the attacks.
Bush, meanwhile, has prepared ads for an advertising onslaught that is to start March 4. His re-election campaign will buy airtime over the next two weeks in selected broadcast markets and nationally on cable stations, including CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, according to a Bush-Cheney campaign source, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
Attacking Kerry
In his 40-minute address, Bush mentioned none of the Democratic presidential candidates by name, but some of his sharpest criticism was unmistakably intended for Kerry.
“The other party’s nomination battle is still playing out. The candidates are an interesting group with diverse opinions,” Bush said. “They’re for tax cuts and against them. They’re for NAFTA and against NAFTA. They’re for the Patriot Act and against the Patriot Act. They’re in favor of liberating Iraq, and opposed to it. And that’s just one senator from Massachusetts.” His supportive audience erupted in laughter and applause.
Kerry spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter disputed Bush’s list of purported flip-flops. Kerry opposed Bush’s tax cuts for the richest Americans and stands by that; voted for NAFTA and stands by it; voted for the Patriot Act, but believes the Justice Department is using it to trample civil liberties; and stands by his vote to authorize force in Iraq, but believes Bush’s prosecution of the war “created a breeding ground for terror” and alienated allies, Cutter said.
Edwards denounced Bush’s new rhetoric. “The American people want this campaign to be about the future, not the past,” he said. “We offer leadership and hope, the Republicans want to exploit fears and relitigate the past.”
| Replies | Last Reply at | Last Message |
|---|---|---|
| 0 |