Feb. 5 Primaries to Pose A Super Test of Strategy

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Campaign 2008: Gearing Up for Super Tuesday

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) surprise victory in New Hampshire's Democratic primary, and Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) win that same night on the GOP side, threw the fights for the 2008 presidential party nominations wide open. Now, candidates focus on the upcoming primary and caucus states of Michigan, South Carolina, Nevada and Florida.

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But weak finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire have reduced his campaign to a virtual one-state strategy, depending almost entirely on winning Florida.

For Democrats, the competition is clear: a race between Clinton and Obama, with Edwards determined to upset expectations and remain strong through Feb. 5 and beyond. Advisers to Clinton and to Obama describe their contest -- and how to define winning it -- in different terms.

"This is not a battle for states -- this is about delegates," said Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director. "We are past the point where any one state, no matter how important, will have a disproportionate impact relative to their delegate count on the nominating process."

David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, said delegates will be important but not necessarily decisive. "The way we view February 5 is there are 22 states that day, and the goal is to win as many states as we can," he said. "If someone is able to win several more states than your opponent, that is likely to be scored as a pretty significant win."

The Clinton and Obama campaigns have been preparing for Super Tuesday for months. At the time of the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 8, Obama's team had organizers in 19 of the 22 states and will have operations in the remaining three by the end of this week.

"Because of her huge national name-recognition advantage," Steve Hildebrand, a senior Obama adviser, said of Clinton, "it was important to get up and operational early."

Clinton's campaign is behind in setting up state organizations but is moving quickly to catch up. As of Sunday, she had operations in 19 states.

Clinton's aides said four states will be critical in their planning: New Jersey and neighboring New York, where the candidate has a home-court advantage; California, where the Clinton name has been popular and where Latino voters may give her a boost; and Arkansas, where she was first lady in the 1980s. Those states account for 44 percent of delegates awarded on Super Tuesday.

Obama's Feb. 5 base begins with his home state of Illinois, but his campaign hopes to demonstrate broad national appeal by winning states in areas where Democrats normally struggle.

The team is also looking to translate its first-place finish in Iowa to six states with caucuses on Feb. 5. The largest are Colorado, Kansas and Minnesota. But the campaign also is active in North Dakota, where Obama operates three offices; in Alaska, where he has two; and in Idaho, where he has one.

Edwards campaign manager David Bonior said the former senator has strength in such states as California, Georgia, Mississippi, North Dakota and Oklahoma. Edwards will visit four of those states beginning later this week.

Setting and exceeding expectations is part of the competition right now. When Clinton campaign advisers point to the importance of emerging with a big delegate advantage after Super Tuesday, they include the 796 "superdelegates" -- officeholders and party officials who automatically have votes at the convention -- among those they are targeting.

Clinton has an aggressive operation to convert undecided superdelegates and has a clear lead, according to the Associated Press. Plouffe acknowledged that Obama trails Clinton in this competition, but said that superdelegates will be important only if the battle goes to the Democratic National Convention in August. Short of that, he said, superdelegates will fall in line behind the effective winner of the primary battle.

Tad Devine, a longtime Democratic strategist with experience in many campaigns, said victory might be determined by the big states with contests on Super Tuesday. The six largest are California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Georgia.

"If someone were to win five of six of those and the other wins only their home state, the race is likely over," Devine said.

But it is possible no one will emerge from Feb. 5 with a decisive advantage. Said Plouffe: "I think it's likely over the next three weeks that one of us, by [Feb. 5] will have been judged doing enough better than the other that you're on the road to the nomination. But there's no guarantee. We're starting to plan."

Staff writer Shailagh Murray and research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.