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Thursday, Mar. 06, 2008

Kentucky's primary grows in importance

Iowa and New Hampshire couldn't decide it. Neither could the half of the country that voted during the Feb. 5 Super Tuesday.

With this Tuesday's elections producing a Republican nominee but bumping the finish line for Democrats back indefinitely, late-voting states like Kentucky suddenly surged in their strategic importance.

In fact, the 10 states and two territories that have yet to vote in the Democratic primary -- also including Kentucky's neighbors West Virginia and Indiana --are all considered to be in play and sought after by both New York Sen. Hillary Clinton and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

"People have gotten through the initial job interviews, now they're making a hiring decision," said Indiana's Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, a Clinton supporter. Bayh told reporters on a national conference call that those who fretted about the effects of a continuing race are misguided.

"I really wonder about some of these voices out there saying we should stop the democratic process," he said. "We have six and a half million people in our state. I think they have the right to be heard."

Hoosiers get that chance May 6, along with North Carolina voters. West Virginia Democrats go to the polls the following Tuesday.

Then Kentucky is up on May 20. So the Bluegrass will likely see Clinton and Obama quite often in May, as they shuttle back and forth between cities like Indianapolis and Charleston. The campaigns also can hit two states for the price of one by running TV ads in markets on the borders such as Louisville and Huntington, W.Va.

Although the campaigns won't reveal specific strategies, especially two months in advance, backers of Clinton and Obama agree that the marathon will take them through the Bluegrass.

"This race is going to go right down to the end," said Harold Ickes, senior adviser to Clinton's campaign, pointing to the final primary in Puerto Rico on June 7.

U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Louisville and an Obama supporter, said he would have preferred Obama to have won Texas and/or Ohio on Tuesday. But the consolation prize is that his home state suddenly becomes relevant, he said.

'Shaping the battleground'

One key theme crystallized during Tuesday night's results was the difference in support between the two candidates in major cities and rural areas.

Obama defeated Clinton in just five of Ohio's 88 counties. But he won the Buckeye state's three most populous counties that cover Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.

Clinton dominated everywhere else.

In the process, she recaptured support from some of the demographic groups that were key to her earlier wins: white women and blue collar white men.

"Hillary Clinton's camp re-congealed," said John Gilliom, chairman of the political science department at Ohio University in Athens. "Everybody held on to their camp. That's what produces the kind of stalemate situation that we have."

Gilliom said Kentuckians can expect a similar storyline to play out in the Bluegrass.

"One of the things we saw in the Ohio vote is the way that these large demographic groups behaved was the battle," he said. And the candidates are "not just fighting the battle, they're shaping the battleground."

At the crossroads

Any color-coded map of the Democratic primary results in the United States reveals a band of support for Clinton that sweeps across the middle of the country like a belt from California through Oklahoma to Tennessee.

States Obama won fill the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and much of the South.

Five of the states that have yet to vote sit in the crossroads of those regions with Kentucky smack in the middle.

"Kentucky is kind of that mix that is going to be hard to predict," said Yarmuth, who so far is the only one of Kentucky's eight superdelegates to pledge his support to Obama.

He said he expects Obama do well in Louisville and Northern Kentucky, as well as Lexington with its college campuses, while the southern stretch of Kentucky, which has more in common with Tennessee, will likely go for Clinton.

"It's going to be the golden triangle against the rest of the state, I guess," Yarmuth said.

Ickes touted Clinton's ability to win "key swing states" that have played important roles in recent presidential general elections, such as New Mexico, Tennessee and Ohio.

Kentucky, which has gone with the winning presidential candidate in each election since 1964, arguably falls into that category.

"I think Kentucky is very much up for grabs," Yarmuth said. "I think you can almost flip a coin at this point."