John McCain tightened his grip yesterday on the Republican presidential nomination, sweeping the winner-take-all states across the Northeast and also winning the delegate-rich states of California, Illinois, Missouri, and his home state of Arizona.
After a surprising string of wins yesterday, Mike Huckabee vied with Mitt Romney to be McCain's main competitor and extend the race.
McCain won in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Delaware, claiming 198 delegates and widening his delegate lead. With more than 500 delegates - more than 40 percent of the total needed to clinch the nomination - he amassed such a large lead in the count that it appears mathematically very difficult for either Romney or Huckabee to catch up.
McCain declared himself the front-runner for the nomination.
"We have won a number of important victories in the closest thing we have ever had to a national primary," he told supporters last night in Phoenix. "We've won some of the biggest states in the country."
He said that while he didn't mind being the underdog or coming from behind, "I think we must get used to the idea that we are the Republican Party front-runner for the nomination of President of the United States. And I don't really mind it one bit."
Romney won in his home state of Massachusetts, in heavily Mormon Utah, in Colorado, Minnesota, Montana, and North Dakota, but the Bay State was not a winner-take-all contest, forcing him to share some of its 40 delegates with McCain.
Still, Romney vowed last night to stay in the Republican presidential race for the long term, even as he and his key advisers scheduled a meeting for today about the campaign's future.
"One thing that's clear is that this campaign is going on," he told supporters at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. "We're going to keep on battling, we're going to go all the way to the convention, we're going to win this thing and go to the White House."
Huckabee showed strength across the South, emerging as the winner in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and in his home state of Arkansas. He also prevailed in West Virginia, winning its 18 delegates after a deal between his supporters and McCain's thwarted a Romney victory.
Huckabee declared last night that he, not Romney, and McCain are competing for the Republican nomination. Saying there's been a lot of talk about a two-man race, Huckabee said, "It is, and we're in it."
The former Arkansas governor, however, made clear yesterday that he would support McCain if he doesn't win the nomination.
McCain hoped to emerge as the presumptive nominee after Super Tuesday, a 21-state, coast-to-coast GOP showdown. Up for grabs were more than 1,000 delegates in a patchwork of primaries, caucuses, and conventions. The Arizona senator won 402 delegates yesterday to 107 for Romney and 99 for Huckabee in incomplete results, according to an Associated Press tally.
McCain established a lead in delegates by winning big states, not by running the table, and Huckabee fared better than expected.
"There's no surprise about McCain. He's winning every place he was supposed to win," said Grant Woods, a former Arizona attorney general and longtime McCain ally. "The surprise tonight on the Republican side is in that in the toss-up states McCain is not winning, the one beating him is Huckabee, not Romney."
"At some point, John's people are going to have to start to say Huckabee is in second place, not Romney," said Woods.
Romney was counting on a growing groundswell of support from, among others, a constellation of conservative talk show hosts, including Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity, all of whom have either attacked McCain as dangerously liberal or more enthusiastically embraced Romney's candidacy in recent days.
McCain was banking on growing support from Republican Party leaders and trying to capitalize on an emerging perception that he will inevitably be the nominee and the strongest choice to face the Democratic pick in November.
McCain led slightly among registered Republicans voting yesterday and held bigger leads among independents voting in GOP primaries as well as those who identified themselves as moderates. Romney had the advantage among conservatives, according to preliminary results of exit polling for the Associated Press and television networks.
West Virginia Republicans had the first say yesterday, resolving at their convention to award 18 delegates to Huckabee after he and McCain cut a deal to thwart Romney.
Romney had banked on a rout in West Virginia. He made a trip to Charleston yesterday and addressed the convention in person. His campaign had also run radio ads and started building a ground operation there in July 2006, before he was an official candidate.
Romney beat Huckabee on the first ballot, but because he did not have at least 50 percent, the convention went to a second ballot. McCain then released his delegates to Huckabee, putting him over the top. The move prompted the Romney campaign to cry foul.
"Unfortunately, this is what Senator McCain's inside-Washington ways look like. He cut a backroom deal with the tax-and-spend candidate he thought could best stop Governor Romney's campaign of conservative change," Romney's campaign manager, Beth Myers, said in a statement.
Underscoring the hard feelings that have tinged his rivalry with Romney, McCain scolded the former Massachusetts governor for pointing fingers in his West Virginia loss.
Huckabee had a more cutting response.
"Well, yesterday, he was chiding me," Huckabee said on CNN. "He said not to whine. Today, he's changed his position on whining, and today he's for whining. So once again, Mitt has been able to take both sides of all issues, including whining."
Romney's electoral strategy hinged on strong showings in California, the biggest prize with 170 delegates, and states that hold caucuses and conventions, where he can use his organizational and financial muscle to turn out his supporters. Besides West Virginia, his campaign hoped to do well in Colorado, Utah, Montana, Alaska, North Dakota, and Massachusetts.
All week, Romney has been campaigning as the conservative challenger to McCain, criticizing him for supporting a comprehensive immigration plan, energy cap-and-trade legislation, and campaign finance restrictions. When McCain supporters passed out fliers at the West Virginia convention that called him a flip-flopper, Romney lashed out.
"Senator McCain, I think, has proven that he will say anything to win this election," Romney said yesterday. "He has taken on a very aggressive and bold strategy of misrepresentation, and it works in politics to a degree."
McCain has been stressing his national security credentials and projecting an image as a straight talker. Yesterday, he flew from New York to San Diego, where he hosted an airport rally with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger designed to generate evening news coverage statewide and shore up his standing in California.
"He is running to say 'Hasta la vista' to wasteful spending in Washington," Schwarzenegger said, using a line from his "Terminator" movies and citing his own background as an immigrant from Austria as a reason for supporting McCain.
The hastily scheduled stop signaled that McCain's campaign - which spent the weekend traveling through Southern and Northeastern states, including some where polls suggested McCain had dominant leads - remained uncertain of its position in California, where delegates are allocated in a complex manner that his strategists acknowledge made it hard to predict.
After winning Iowa but losing South Carolina, Huckabee scaled back his campaign and was focusing on a handful of Southern states where he hoped to harness support from fellow evangelical Christians.
Ron Paul, who has not won a state, was hoping to keep his libertarian-influenced message alive on the wings of his passionate supporters.
