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Hillary wins New Mexico caucus after string of defeats

* Clinton now has 12 wins compared to Obama’s 22
* Romney endorses McCain g Early Iraq withdrawal means ‘genocide’: McCain

WASHINGTON: Hillary Clinton got a badly needed piece of good news Thursday with word she had won last week’s New Mexico Democratic presidential caucus over her surging rival Barack Obama.

Clinton received 73,105 votes while Obama had 71,396 votes in the February 5 caucus that drew record turnout, state Democratic official Brian Colon told a televised news conference from New Mexico. It was a welcome result for the former first lady who had lost eight straight nominating contests to her Senate colleague Obama since splitting the “Super Tuesday” slate of races on February 5.

With New Mexico, Clinton now has won party contests in 12 states compared to 22 for Obama, who has pulled ahead in the all-important tally of delegates to the Democratic nominating convention in August. Clinton has been struggling to blunt Obama’s momentum and hang on until the race moves to the delegate-rich states of Ohio and Texas on March 4 and Pennsylvania on April 22.

A total of 492 delegates, nearly a quarter of the 2,025 needed for the nomination, will be at stake in primaries in the three states, where Clinton feels on friendlier ground. A Quinnipiac University poll published Thursday gave Clinton a 55-34 percent lead over Obama in Ohio and a 52-36 percent edge in Pennsylvania. There have been no recent polls reported on the Texas race.

Romney-McCain: Republican presidential front-runner John McCain courted the wary conservative wing of his party Friday after winning the endorsement of former bitter White House rival Mitt Romney. Putting aside their differences, Romney praised McCain as a “true American hero” and urged the 291 delegates pledged to vote for him to switch allegiance to the former Vietnam prisoner of war.

Genocide: McCain drew sharp distinctions with his Democratic White House rivals over Iraq, saying an untimely US withdrawal would bring about “genocide.” In an interview with CNN, the presumptive Republican nominee for president slammed Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who have said they would begin withdrawing troops from Iraq in their first months in the White House.

“Both Senator Obama and Clinton want to set a date for withdrawal. That means chaos. That means genocide,” he told CNN’s Larry King late Thursday. afp

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