Ohio equals math challenge for Clinton, Obama

by Jim Tankersley

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Deciding presidential elections is old hat for Ohio. Deciding a presidential nomination? That's a little more novel. And a little more complicated.

As Wisconsin and Hawaii slide into the rearview mirror for Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Ohio and its 161 delegates are set to assume an unfamiliar prominence in the presidential primary sweepstakes. The March 4 votes here and in Texas loom as must-wins for Clinton, as she tries to stop Obama's winning streak and keep her White House hopes alive, and a chance for Obama to all-but seal the nomination with a win.

The candidates know the stakes -- and they're responding with television ad blitzes, statewide campaign swings and the sort of grassroots pushes usually reserved for late October around here.

But unlike this fall, when the popular vote winner is guaranteed to take all of Ohio's 20 electoral votes, Clinton and Obama are also playing a complex math game as they target and turn out voters statewide. It's not as convoluted as Texas -- we won't even try to explain the delegate selection process there in this post -- but it's tricky enough to influence where and how the candidates will campaign across the Buckeye State over the next two weeks.

Ohio will award 91 pledged delegates proportionally by congressional district. (The rest are so-called "super delegates"; party leaders who are free to back whomever they choose at the Democratic National Convention.) Not all congressional district have the same number of delegates at stake, though. The more the district voted for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) in the 2004 presidential race, the more delegates it carries.

Here's a quick guide for which districts figure to matter more than others leading into March 4:

* The most delegate-heavy district in the state is the 11th CD, on Cleveland's east side. It is represented by Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, a prominent Clinton supporter -- but its demographics skew heavily toward Obama, including a large African American population. Eight delegates are at stake; experts say Obama could win at least five.

* Several districts have an odd number of delegates -- meaning the winner is guaranteed to gain at least a one-delegate advantage there. They include the 17th, which encompasses much of the struggling areas around Youngstown - which has already drawn visits from both Clinton and Obama - and the 6th, the former district of Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, another prominent Clinton supporter. The odd-delegate districts are clustered in southeast Ohio, so expect to see candidates spend a lot of time there.

* Relatively fewer delegates are up for grabs in the two districts that slice through Columbus, the capital and the home of television's Keaton family, whose suburbs are always a key general election battleground. But the Columbus media market reaches into several other districts beyond the metro area limits, which explains why we've seen plenty of political ads on television here already tonight.

* Six delegates are on the line in the 9th congressional district, which includes the city of Toledo and your Swamp correspondent's favorite Ohio restaurant: the legendary Hungarian hot dog joint, Tony Packo's.