Following Sen. Hillary Clinton’s wins Tuesday in Ohio, Rhode Island and the Texas primary, Democratic candidates are once again pitted against each other in a head-to-head race. Both are trying to woo voters in the next battleground state of Wyoming, which holds its caucuses Saturday.
Wyoming has rarely had a moment in the political spotlight since 1960, when the state’s delegates voted for John F. Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention and gave him the few remaining delegates needed to clinch the party’s nomination.
This historical note was featured in a modified version of Sen. Barack Obama’s well-known “Yes We Can” video with the added note “In 2008, Wyoming citizens could again decide the next President of the United States.”
“Some Democrats in Wyoming say that have never seen a political mood swing so overwhelming or so fast — from the status quo of irrelevance to full kiss-kiss campaign embrace, in nothing flat,” the San Jose Mercury News reported.
Still, some Democrats are enjoying the attention. Many are turning out in large numbers to hear Clinton and Obama and their surrogates speak.
Obama, Sen. Clinton and her husband all held events on Friday in Laramie. Bill Clinton spoke to audiences at the University of Wyoming about environmental issues important to the state.
“This is the biggest coal-producing state in America,” he said, adding that his wife’s energy plan “would fund 10 large carbon sequestration projects” to work toward removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” the Wyoming Tribune reported.
He also tried to appeal to the state’s historical feminism. “Wyoming, you led the nation with women’s suffrage, you might as well lead the nation with the first woman president.”
Obama seemed confident Friday, seeing Wyoming’s caucuses and Mississippi’s Tuesday primary as opportunities to reestablish a larger delegate lead.
“We feel there’s a strong possibility that we gain substantially more delegates out of Wyoming and Mississippi than Senator Clinton gained (on Tuesday),” he told reporters, according to CBS News. “So we will continue to build our delegate lead, we will continue to campaign in every state, we will not be cherry picking which states we deem important, because our attitude is every state is important,” he added.
Email This
Vote 2008 Subscriptions 
