OBAMA IS RACING AGAINST THE CLOCK (Alec MacGillis and Anne E. Kornblut, Washington Post) The compressed primary calendar presents a challenge for all of the remaining candidates, as they try to visit as many as possible of the more than 20 states holding elections or caucuses on Tuesday. But the time crunch is particularly acute for Obama, who, for all the hype around his candidacy, remains far less well known than Clinton. Obama vaulted into contention against her by spending week upon week in Iowa before the state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses. He engaged in an intensive grass-roots effort and visited the smallest towns and the most remote county fairgrounds to introduce himself to voters, who rewarded him with a big win over his rivals. Now, with far less time and broader territory to cover, he must make do with a radically truncated version of that outreach, relying on a single final visit to big cities to win over voters to whom he remains little more than a first-term senator with an exotic name and a reputation for oratory. His efforts appear to be paying off, as his standing in polls inches closer and closer to Clinton’s. The question is whether he has enough time to make up the gap.
OBAMA WORKS TO CLAIM LATINO VOTE (Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times) Some polls have shown Obama trailing Clinton among Latinos by a 3-to-1 margin. Many Latino voters have a deep-rooted relationship with the senator from New York and her husband. Clinton advisors are confident that this will serve her well Tuesday in states with large Latino populations, including California, New Mexico, Arizona and New Jersey. Nonetheless, the Obama campaign has put substantial money and energy behind the idea that newly minted political activists like Perez – working in places that are not a major focus for the Clinton campaign – ultimately will yield a rich harvest of delegates. Their bet: that they can take advantage of elaborate rules for the allocation of delegates. Rather than using a winner-take-all system, Democrats will award delegates to candidates in each Super Tuesday state according to the share of the vote they win. That means that even in states where Clinton is on track to win the most votes, such as New York and New Jersey, Obama could emerge with a large share of delegates too. And in other states, the Obama camp hopes its strategy will boost it to an outright win in the statewide vote – or, in the case of Colorado, to a win in the state’s nominating caucuses.
KENNEDY REVELS IN LIMELIGHT AS HE STUMPS FOR OBAMA (Mark Leibovich, New York Times) The white-haired liberal legend with a bad back, halting speech and worn brown shoes has been called a “lion in winter” so many times that he has the political cliché version of frostbite. Yet Mr. Kennedy, 75, is hot, hot, hot on the trail, stumping for Senator Barack Obama, who was 15 months old when Mr. Kennedy began his Senate career in 1962. He is drawing raucous crowds, invoking the family legacy, working the lunch crowd at the Flying Tortilla in Santa Fe and getting the kitchen staff together for a photo.
MORE OBAMA: Oprah’s Back (New York Times) Obama Slams McCain in N.M. (ABC)
IN CHASE GAME WITH MEDIA, BILL’S ‘IT’ (Michael Calderone, Politico) With presidential candidates dropping like flies, the television networks are pouring more resources into covering the most famous non-candidate on the campaign trail: Bill Clinton. Now, all the major players — NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX and CNN — have producers on the President Clinton beat, most joining within the past two weeks. But, at times, it has been a game of catch me if you can. Top-tier presidential candidates will have a bus, and often a plane, reserved for traveling media and embedded network producers trying to make every event. But former President Clinton — despite occasionally grabbing more headlines than anyone in the field — is a campaign surrogate, not a candidate. So it’s often impossible to have one producer cover him, as he jets between campaign stops in a private plane, along with his Secret Service detail. Matt McKenna, who shifted within the Hillary Rodham Clinton campaign to become the press liaison for President Clinton in December, called the situation “unprecedented.”
CLINTON’S GRADUAL EDUCATION ON ISSUES OF RACE (Mark Leibovich, New York Times) In a presidential campaign in which race has become a dominant issue, Mrs. Clinton’s early brush with Dr. King has been a recurring theme, invoked as a kind of “a-ha” episode to explain her coming of age on race. Yet Mrs. Clinton’s passage from sheltered Park Ridge, through the ferment of the civil rights era, to competing for black votes across the South, has been more gradual and introspective.
HUCKABEE MAY TIP SOUTH AWAY FROM ROMNEY (Michael Kranish, Boston Globe) As Mitt Romney prepared this week to enter the Super Tuesday contests, he declared confidently that “in a two-person race, I like my chances.” But the problem with Romney’s assertion is evident in the South. Romney is not just facing John McCain, but Mike Huckabee, who is running strongly in polls in the four Southern states voting Tuesday, where he has his biggest base of evangelical support. The Huckabee factor may be getting relatively little attention nationally in the Republican nomination battle because the former Arkansas governor has failed to repeat his Iowa victory. But in a region that has equal or greater evangelical strength than Iowa, Huckabee may become the decisive factor - at Romney’s expense.
IMMIGRATION BATTLE DIVIDES ARIZONA G.O.P. (Joel Achenbach, Washington Post) McCain is likely to win the state’s Republican primary on Tuesday. He wins elections here in Arizona easily. Party activists don’t control the Republicans in voting booths any more than they control the senior senator. But McCain’s in-state problems reflect his national quandary as he tries to convince American conservatives that he’s one of them. Once home to Barry Goldwater, Arizona has a credible claim as the birthplace of modern American conservatism. But even Goldwater, late in life, found himself at odds with many conservatives in the state who laced the ideology with social issues that had nothing to do with low taxes and small government.
ROMNEY MAPS A STRATEGY FOR SURVIVAL (Michael Luo, New York Times) Operating in survival mode, Mr. Romney’s circle of advisers has come up with a detailed road map to try to salvage his campaign. The plan is complete with a new infusion of cash from Mr. Romney, a long-term strategy intended to turn the campaign into a protracted delegate fight and a reframing of the race as a one-on-one battle for the future of the party that seeks to sound the alarm among conservatives about Mr. McCain. The advisers have drawn up a list of states, dividing and ranking them into those considered relatively easy and inexpensive targets, along with a broader grouping of more costly battlegrounds where the advisers hope that Mr. Romney can be competitive.
