Mississippi primary | African-American vote carries Obama to win

JACKSON, Miss. — Barack Obama coasted to victory in Mississippi’s Democratic primary Tuesday, latest in a string of racially polarized presidential contests across the Deep South and a final tuneup before next month’s high-stakes race with Hillary Rodham Clinton in Pennsylvania.

Obama was winning roughly 90 percent of the black vote but only about one-quarter of the white vote, extending a pattern that carried him to victory in earlier primaries in South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana.

His triumph seemed unlikely to shorten a Democratic marathon expected to last at least six more weeks — and possibly far longer — while Republicans and their nominee-in-waiting, Sen. John McCain, turn their attention to the fall campaign.

“Now we look forward to campaigning in Pennsylvania and around the country,” Maggie Williams, Clinton’s campaign manager, said in a written statement that congratulated Obama on his victory.

“I’m confident that once we get a nominee, the party is going to be unified,” Obama said as he collected his victory.

Returns from 80 percent of Mississippi’s precincts showed Obama gaining 59 percent, to 39 percent for Clinton.

Neither of the two rivals appears able to win enough delegates through primaries and caucuses to prevail in their historic race for the nomination, a development that has elevated the importance of nearly 800 elected officials and party leaders who will attend next summer’s national convention as unelected superdelegates.

There was little suspense about the Mississippi outcome, and both Clinton and Obama spent part of their day campaigning in Pennsylvania, which has 158 delegates at stake in a primary on April 22.

The volatile issue of race has been a constant presence in the Democrats’ campaign, and it resurfaced during the day in comments by Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate and a Clinton supporter.

“If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept,” she said in an interview with the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif., published Friday.

Clinton expressed disagreement with Ferraro’s comments, and said, “It’s regrettable that any of our supporters — on both sides, because we both have this experience — say things that kind of veer off into the personal.”

Obama called Ferraro’s remarks “patently absurd.”

The Republican primary provided even less suspense than the Democratic contest. McCain had already amassed enough delegates to win his party’s nomination and was in New York, attending an evening fundraiser that was expected to raise $1 million.

Besides Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota also have primaries remaining.