Clinton, Obama trade victories, McCain sweeps East Coast on Super Tuesday

WASHINGTON – Sen. John McCain swept a string of delegate-rich, East Coast primaries Tuesday night, reaching for command of the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama traded victories in an epic struggle from Connecticut to California.\nThe former first lady said, “I look forward to continuing our campaign and our debate about how to leave this country better off for the next generation.”\nMcCain, the early Republican front-runner whose campaign nearly unraveled six months ago, won in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware to gain all 198 delegates at stake there. He also put Illinois and Oklahoma in his column.\nFormer Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won a series of Bible Belt victories, in Alabama and Georgia as well as his own home state. He also triumphed at the Republican West Virginia convention, and told The Associated Press in an interview he would campaign on. \n“The one way you can’t win a race is to quit it, and until somebody beats me, I’m going to answer the bell for every round of this fight,” he said.\nRomney, the former governor of Massachusetts, won a home state victory. He also took Utah, where fellow Mormons supported his candidacy. He, too, breathed defiance. \n“We’re going to go all the way to the convention,” he told supporters in Boston. “We’re going to win this thing.”\nDemocrats played out a historic struggle between Clinton, seeking to become the first female president, and Obama, hoping to become the first black to win the White House.\nClinton won at home in New York as well as in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arkansas, where she was first lady for more than a decade. She also won the caucuses in American Samoa.\nObama won Connecticut, Georgia, Alabama, Delaware, Utah and his home state of Illinois. He also prevailed in North Dakota, Minnesota and Kansas, three caucus states.\nAfter an early series of low-delegate, single-state contests, Super Tuesday was anything but small – its primaries and caucuses were spread across nearly half the country in the most wide-open presidential campaign in memory.\nThe result was a double-barreled set of races, Obama and Clinton fighting for delegates as well as bragging rights in individual states, the Republicans doing the same.\nPolling place interviews with voters suggested subtle shifts in the political landscape, potentially significant as the races push on through the campaign calendar.\nFor the first time this year, McCain ran first in a few states among self-identified Republicans. Romney was getting the votes of about four in 10 people who described themselves as conservative. McCain was wining about one-third of that group, and Huckabee about one in five.