Clinton casts a hopeful eye toward Ohio, Texas

On the day after suffering lopsided losses in the Potomac Primaries, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign said Wednesday that voters in Ohio and Texas next month will help the New York senator close the delegate gap with Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) in the Democratic presidential nomination race.

{mosads}Clinton should be within 25 delegates of Obama after March 4, the date of primaries in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont, said Guy Cecil, the campaign’s political director, in a conference call with reporters. Obama’s campaign has said that it now leads Clinton by 136 delegates, though news organizations said Obama’s lead is as small as 25 delegates. That margin, Cecil said, is less than 1 percent of the total number of delegates that will have been committed after March 4.

Mark Penn, Clinton’s main strategist and pollster, downplayed Obama’s victories in Maryland and Virginia that included winning among Hispanic and female voters, groups that had been supportive of Clinton in past contests. Penn said that Clinton’s coalitions would hold in Ohio, Texas and in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, just as they had in New York, California and New Jersey.

“Can we possibly have a nominee who hasn’t won any of the really significant and major states in play outside of Illinois?” said Howard Wolfson, Clinton’s spokesman.

Penn said Clinton had the lead in polls of Democratic voters in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Those surveys, however, were conducted before Obama’s victories Tuesday. Obama is also leading in polls in Wisconsin, which votes next week.

Penn remained confident that Ohio, where Clinton will focus on the economy, and Texas, where Hispanics have made up a quarter of the electorate in previous Democratic primaries, will turn out differently than each of the February contests, all eight of which Obama has won so far.

“It is not unusual historically to see these races seesaw back and forth,” Penn said. “[Walter] Mondale in ’84 lost a wide series. [Jimmy] Carter lost 24 states before winning Ohio and California.”