With homestater Rudy Giuliani out of the race, Sen. John McCain of Arizona made a clean sweep across New York in the Super Tuesday Republican presidential primary.
Statewide, with 96 percent of precincts reporting, McCain had 51 percent of the vote, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 28 percent. In Onondaga County, with 99 percent of the precincts reporting, McCain had 50 percent of the vote to Romney’s 30 percent.
The win in New York gives McCain all 101 of the state’s delegates to the Republican convention, where he will need 1,091 to win the party’s presidential nomination.
McCain has been gaining popularity since the country’s first primaries were held in New Hampshire on Jan. 8. There he won his first seven delegates to the Republican Party’s presidential nominating convention.
In New York, the Republican candidate field had been trimmed down when former New York May Mayor Rudy dropped out of the race last week. That left the three main contenders as McCain, Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Huckabee won 11 percent of the Republican vote statewide and in Onondaga County. Giuliani’s name remained on the ballot and he took 3 percent of the statewide vote and 2 percent in Onondaga County.
As for Super Tuesday’s results, the McCain camp was not surprised, said Vince Casale, a volunteer for the campaign in New York. “The senator’s chances looked extremely good,” Casale said. “He has been surging for sometime now, and really catching on in the Upstate New York area.”
But it was more than just Giuliani’s recent concession that pushed things over the edge for the McCain campaign, he said. “The endorsement he received from Mayor Giuliani last week really sealed the deal,” Casale said.
Unlike the Democratic candidates, who divide their delegates based on the vote’s outcome, the Republicans have a “winner-take-all” primary in New York.
This strategy works to simplify the results for the Republicans, but puts much more at stake as well. So although other prominent Republicans had gotten their share of the New York vote, they will receive none of its delegates.
That winner-take-all caused Giuliani to lose Florida’s 57 delegates, a state that he had marked as key to his campaign.
New York has the second highest delegate count following California, and is crucial to any candidate’s campaign for the party’s nomination.
(Larissa Padden is a graduate student in magazine-newspaper-online journalism.)
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