WASHINGTON (AFP) – Hillary Clinton’s race for the White House showed vulnerability Wednesday as she admitted tapping her own pocketbook for five million dollars to keep up a grueling fight against rival Barack Obama.
One day after fighting to a virtual draw with Senator Obama in the Super Tuesday primaries, Senator Clinton acknowledged that his fund-raising supremacy had pushed her to tap her personal finances in January for the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination. “I loaned the campaign five million from my money,” Clinton said, a day after 22 state nominating contests failed to set a clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination.
“I loaned it because I believe very strongly in this campaign. We had a great month fund-raising in January, broke all records. But my opponent was able to raise more money,” Clinton said. The admission came as Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean warned that the party needed to settle the winner before its nominating convention in August or face an uphill challenge against Republicans in the November 4 presidential election. “The idea that we can afford to have a big fight at the convention and then win the race in the next eight weeks, I think, is not a good scenario,” Dean said on NY1 television, according to excerpts.
“I think we will have a nominee sometime in the middle of March or April. But if we don’t, then we’re going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement,” he said. The virtual tie between Clinton — seeking to become the country’s first female president — and Obama, in his quest to be the first African-American US leader, has opened the prospect that the convention, which formally anoints a nominee, could end up being “brokered” — negotiated under great pressure and the cloud of shady deal-making in back rooms.
While Dean warned of that scenario, on the Republican side John McCain sought to woo the Republican Party’s wary conservative base to seal the deal for his party’s nomination after a spate of solid victories on Super Tuesday. “We’ll be hitting the campaign trail tomorrow morning,” McCain said in Phoenix, Arizona. “Hopefully we can wrap this thing up, unite the party and be ready to take on the Democratic nominee in November.”
The Arizona senator won nine of 21 states on offer Tuesday, including the high-population prizes California and New York. That gave him a commanding lead of 604 delegates to the Republican convention, compared with 244 for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and 187 for former Arkansas governore Mike Huckabee. But McCain, 71, remains short of the 1,191 needed to win the nomination, according to a Real Clear Politics count.
With neither rival ready to concede defeat, McCain cancelled a planned trip to Europe to meet British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and address a German security conference in order to campaign. The Super Tuesday fight left Clinton and Obama in a virtual dead heat, forcing them to galvanize their campaigns for several more grueling weeks fighting on new state battlegrounds. Former first lady Clinton, 60, won eight states, including the three biggest prizes, California, her home state of New York and Massachusetts, checking Obama’s capture of 13 states. Another state, New Mexico, remained too close to call almost 24 hours after polls closed.
The rivals were gearing up for the next Democratic nominating contests on Saturday — in Louisiana, Nebraska and the Virgin Islands — Sunday in Maine, and Tuesday in Virginia, Maryland and Washington DC. “It will be a mad dash until Tuesday. Not a lot of time to catch your breath. We are full speed ahead,” Clinton said at her campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. A Real Clear Politics running count had the New York senator with 900 delegates, not yet half of the 2,025 she needs to capture the nomination. Illinois Senator Obama, 46, was close behind with 824.
The two sides fought a war of perception over Tuesday’s results. “A month and a half is an eternity in politics generally. It’s certainly an eternity in this race especially,” Obama told reporters. “We feel confident that the wind is at our back.”