Super Tuesday Looms as Candidates Make Final Pitches

The clock is ticking. Campaign funds are being extinguished as the campaigns pump every last effort into turning out the vote for their candidate. This is where Tuesday February 5, 2008 leaves us, the granddaddy of all campaign days: Super Tuesday.

In the Republican race, Romney is trying to survive as he lags further behind in the national race.

A key battleground to watch tomorrow will be California. California is running a closed primary tomorrow, so Iranian Americans will have a great role in deciding who snares the Golden State because 20% of California voters are self-described independents, and

Also, the economy remains a key concern among GOP voters, and all voters in general, so look for more economic chest-pounding by the candidates because California and several states were affected heavily by the economic downturn.

Obama and Clinton have all hands on deck as spouses, surrogates and the candidates themselves trek the country for precious votes in tomorrow’s primary. Obama is contesting Clinton strongholds like New Jersey and even her home state of New York, and again, the substantial representation of Iranian Americans will be a huge factor in who captures these delegate rich states.

All in all, tomorrow makes for one of the more exciting political dramas we’ve seen in the last few election cycles.

Southern Hospitality and Super Tuesday

Last Saturday, Senator Barack Obama scored a substantial victory in the South Carolina Democratic primary. Following a contentious week of back-and-forth attacks and allegations of record distortion, Obama beat his rivals Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) in the nation’s first Southern primary.

Two Coasts One Voice

Over the last few weeks, I have been tasked with looking into ways to spread the word about NIAC’s electoral education outreach in the Persian-language media. During this experience, I was both astounded and impressed by the sheer volume of Iranian media outlets (both print and broadcast) based in the United States. It was very unexpected and reassuring to see the lengths of our community’s efforts at creating a media landscape beyond the standard American media outlets. Although the clear lack of professionalism in some of the outlets was discouraging, the vast majority of them were a very pleasant surprise.