DES MOINES, Iowa (Agencies)
Barack Obama has taken a big step toward becoming the first black U.S. president when his campaign for change caught fire in Iowa and swept him past Hillary Clinton in the opening Democratic nominating contest.
On the Republican side, underdog Mike Huckabee capped a stunning political rise to beat Republican rival Mitt Romney, despite being dramatically outspent by the wealthy former Massachusetts governor and venture capitalist.
Obama, an Illinois senator, captured the first Democratic prize on the road to the White House with a comeback triumph over New York Sen. Clinton and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who were in a tight battle for second.
"We are choosing hope over fear, we are choosing unity over division and sending a powerful message that change is coming to America," Obama told thousands of cheering supporters.
Obama's triumph vindicated the 46-year-old senator's soaring message of hope and political change and boosts his own historic quest to be the first black president of the United States. |
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First black president The 2008 campaign is the most open presidential race in more than 50 years It confirms Obama, son of a Kenyan father and white American mother, as a real threat for the Democratic nomination, and raised doubts whether Clinton's message of experience and mastery of Washington politics will play with voters.
The former first lady, who looked set to slump to third place just behind former vice-presidential nominee Edwards, must halt the Obama bandwagon in Tuesday's primary in New Hampshire -- the state which revived her husband former president Bill Clinton's White House campaign in 1992.
Obama's win effectively makes him the candidate to beat among Democrats, and a win in New Hampshire could put him in prime position to capture the nomination. The next big contest would be in South Carolina, where more than half of the voters in the Democratic primary are likely to be black.
Both Obama and Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor and ordained Baptist minister, once trailed Clinton and Romney in their race to be on the November election ballot, but rode a wave of grass-roots enthusiasm to victories by touting an outsider's message of change in Washington.
"Tonight what we have seen is a new day in American politics," Huckabee, with actor and supporter Chuck Norris nearby, told cheering backers in Des Moines. "Tonight we proved that American politics is still in the hands of people like you."
The 2008 campaign is the most open presidential race in more than 50 years, with no sitting president or vice president seeking their party's nomination, and the Iowa contest was the most hotly contested in the state's history.
Turnout among Democrats topped 220,000, smashing the previous record of 124,000 in 2004 -- testament to the high enthusiasm among Democrats heading into November's election.
"Today we are sending a clear message that we are going to have change, and that change will be a Democratic president in the White House," Clinton, with husband and former President Bill Clinton at her shoulder, said in Des Moines.
For the winner in Iowa, the prize is valuable momentum and at least a temporary claim to the front-runner's slot in their battle to win the party's presidential nomination in the November election.
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