CASPER, Wyo. - Mitt Romney captured his first win of the Republican presidential race yesterday, gaining most of Wyoming's delegates at stake in GOP caucuses.
The former Massachusetts governor won seven delegates, former senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee got two, and US Representative Duncan Hunter of California won one, meaning no other candidate could beat Romney. Caucuses were still being held to decide all 12 delegates at stake.
The win was a boost for Romney, coming two days after his loss to Mike Huckabee in the Iowa caucuses and three days before the first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire. Wyoming had scheduled its GOP county conventions earlier to attract candidates to the state but had only modest results. Romney visited Wyoming in August and November and three of his five sons campaigned in the state. One son, Josh, owns a ranch in southwest Wyoming.
Hunter, Thompson, and Representative Ron Paul of Texas also stopped by the state, but no candidates have visited in the past four weeks.
Wyoming Republicans also paid a price for jumping ahead. The Republican National Committee has slashed half of Wyoming's 28 national convention delegates. National party leaders similarly penalized Florida, Michigan, New Hampshire, and South Carolina for moving up the dates of their nomination contests.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Secret Service agents yesterday separated O'Reilly and Obama aide Marvin Nicholson after the Fox News Channel personality grabbed Nicholson on a post-speech rope line in a high school gym. According to a witness, O'Reilly reached with two hands for Nicholson - who at 6-foot-8 had a slight height advantage over the 6-foot-5 O'Reilly - because he stood between O'Reilly's cameraman and Obama as the newsman called out for the candidate's attention.
"He started pushing me and telling me to get out of his shot," Nicholson told reporters afterward. "Then he said I was low-class."
O'Reilly, interviewed afterward by phone on Fox News, said he tried "to gently remove" Nicholson because he was standing in front of Fox's camera, the Associated Press reported.
"We're sorry we had to have that little confrontation, but no one on this earth is going to block a shot on 'The O'Reilly Factor.' It is not going to happen," O'Reilly said.
SASHA ISSENBERG
"We shouldn't just be respecting wealth in this country - we should be respecting work," Obama told an overflow crowd in a high school gymnasium yesterday.
Edwards's 2004 presidential campaign was centered around the idea that the Bush administration had launched a "war on work" through tax cuts that offer incentives for investment over labor.
In this campaign, he has sharpened his populist rhetoric, railing against greedy corporate CEOs who he says are waging war on working people and the middle class.
Since arriving in New Hampshire on Friday, Obama has borrowed Edwards's favorite verb by bragging that he had "fought" as a community organizer and civil rights lawyer.
Obama also criticized "big oil and big insurance," common villains in Edwards's speeches.
SASHA ISSENBERG
