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Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, facing a pair of big Democratic primary tests March 4 that could determine the fate of her presidential candidacy, is deadlocked with Sen. Barack Obama in Texas and holds a slender lead over him in Ohio, according to two new Washington Post-ABC News polls.
In Ohio, Clinton leads Obama in the new poll by 50 percent to 43 percent, a significant but tenuous advantage given the shifts that have taken place elsewhere as candidates intensified their campaigns in advance of previous primaries. In Texas, the race is even, with Clinton at 48 percent and Obama at 47 percent.
In recent contests in Virginia and Wisconsin, Obama cut into Clinton’s coalition, a potentially significant change in the Democratic race.
At this point in Ohio and Texas, Clinton is doing better than she did in those states among her more reliable voters but has yet to make deep inroads into Obama’s core supporters.
Helicopters carrying three senior U.S. senators made emergency landings Thursday in the mountains of Afghanistan because of a snowstorm.
Sens. John Kerry, Joseph Biden and Chuck Hagel were aboard the aircraft. No one was injured, according a statement from Kerry’s office. The senators and their delegation returned to Bagram Air Base in a motor convoy and have left for Turkey.
The lawmakers were on a trip this week that included stops in India, Turkey and Pakistan, where they observed the elections.
Former U.S. Rep. Bob Ney, who pleaded guilty in a congressional bribery scandal tied to disgraced former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, has been moved from prison to a halfway house in Cincinnati, according to the federal prisons Web site.
Ney, a Republican who served six House terms, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in January 2007 after pleading guilty to trading political favors for golf trips, campaign donations and other gifts in the Abramoff lobbying scandal.
Ney, 53, had been held at the Federal Corrections Institution in Morgantown, W.Va. Prison spokesman James Robinson said Thursday he could confirm only that Ney left the prison Tuesday.
Ney earned about nine months off his original sentence because he completed an alcohol treatment program. Ney’s release is scheduled for August, after he will have served nearly 1 1/2 years.
Ted Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in the history of the U.S. Senate, filed for re-election Thursday despite a federal investigation into his ties to an oil field services contractor.
Federal authorities are reviewing the remodeling of the 84-year-old’s official residence in a resort near Anchorage; the contractor helped do the work, but Stevens hasn’t been charged and has said he paid all bills presented to him.
Democrats hope the long-running investigation can weaken Stevens, the most powerful elected official Alaska has produced.
Stevens was appointed to the Senate in 1968, won a special election two years later and has been re-elected six times.
