(CNN) — Democrats faced the prospect of at least six more weeks of tough campaigning after Hillary Clinton’s Tuesday night wins in Tuesday’s primaries in Ohio and Texas as she escaped a knockout blow by Barack Obama. Both Democratic contenders are eyeing Pennsylvania — the last heavyweight state on the primary calendar — as the next major battleground. The state votes April 22, after Democratic caucuses in Wyoming on Saturday and a Mississippi primary March 11.
“Ohio has written a new chapter in the history of this campaign, and we’re just getting started,” Clinton told supporters in her victory speech in Ohio. “More and more people have joined this campaign, and millions of Americans haven’t spoken yet. In states like Pennsylvania and so many others, people are watching this historic campaign, and they want their turn to help make history.”
After winning the biggest prizes in the February 5 Super Tuesday contests, the New York senator and former first lady dropped 11 straight primaries and caucuses to Obama and watched her leads in Ohio and Texas dwindle to single digits in published polls. Obama supporters began calling for her to quit the race in order to head off a more divisive endgame, and even her husband — former President Bill Clinton — told supporters she would be unable to win the nomination without victories in those states. But Clinton hit back with a television ad aimed at raising concerns about Obama’s experience, an ad juxtaposing a sleeping child with a late-night emergency call to the White House.
Her campaign also jumped into the controversy over an Obama adviser’s meeting with Canadian officials to discuss trade policy as the Illinois senator was calling for changes in the North American Free Trade Agreement, accusing him of telling voters one thing and the largest U.S. trade partner another. The attacks appeared to hit their mark: About one in three voters in the Texas and Ohio primaries made up their minds in the last week, and those who did broke heavily for Clinton.
