DALLAS, Texas (AFP) — Texas and Ohio, two states divided by a common Democratic White House race, will Tuesday bring bring sharply opposed chracteristics to bear on the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Obama is aiming for what many observers believe would be a knockout blow, if he can snatch both states, which once widely favored Clinton, to keep up the roaring pace set by his 11 consecutive White House victories.
No less a political judge than former president Bill Clinton has admitted his wife needs to win both states to keep her White House hopes alive, and polls show the race in both, essentially a dead heat.
A final three-day campaign frenzy is playing out as two-front battle, over vastly different terrain, with subtly varied tactics.
The two states are geographically, demographically, economically and culturally a world apart.
Big, brash, dusty Texas, home of juicy steaks, awash in oil money, with a cowboy swagger and unapologetic hard knuckle politics, is a central southern giant enjoying a balmy spring, with temperatures into the high 70s Fahrenheit.
Ohio, meanwhile, the rust-belt midwestern state with hard-core Democratic cities and firm conservative stock in rural and western districs, was mired in midwinter, an apt metaphor for its punishing economic freeze.
Politically, Texas, the Lone Star state, breeds bruisers with hides as tough as the shell of its "official small mammal" the Armadillo.
Disdaining subtlety, it produced gruff Democratic president Lyndon Johnson, and hewed the adamanet political creed of George W. Bush, and is now seeing Obama and Clinton wage a sharp-elbowed war of words on national security.
Top issues in the state include illegal immigration, given its border with Mexico, but people at campaign rallies also want to hear how the Democratic candidates will forge healthcare reform and end the war in Iraq.
Free trade is seen by many here, unlike in Ohio, as a boon, again due to the proximity of the Mexican border.
Ironically, Texas which years ago was a Democratic powerbase, has largely been ceded by the party, as it has trended more conservative in recent years, and it is safe Republican territory in the general election.
Demographically, the state is one-third Hispanic, a voting bloc which normally favors Clinton, and 11 percent African American, a sector which has gone overwhelmingly for Obama in the primary battle.
The Texas 'two-step' election process is also a challenge for Clinton.
Roughly two-thirds of Texas's total 193 Democratic delegates are allocated according to the results of the primaries in the state's 31 electoral districts, and the remaining third come from the caucus process.
"We cannot throw away our hard work, through not being there at the caucuses," said former San Antonio mayor and Clinton administration housing secretary Henry Cisneros on Saturday.
"One of the problems is that in some of the other states, our people were not quite as ready."
Ohio, an electoral bellweather state, is rich in US election lore and it is always a Democrats v Republican battleground.
In 2004, it was the decisive voice which swung the White House back to Bush, under a fierce challenge from John Kerry, who spent days in the state in the run-up to the polls desperately trying to turn it Democratic.
With its blue-collar suburbs of Cleveland, which has a substantial African-American population and nestles close to Lake Erie, and its conservative backwaters, Ohio is a microcosm of the US electoral map.
Unlike Texas it holds a straight Democratic primary -- though independents can vote, a factor that could help Obama.
The state's once-mighty heavy manufacturing sector has taken a hammering from globalisation, the flight of blue-collar jobs abroad and the march of technology.
Both Clinton and Obama have framed fiercely populist messages critical of free trade, and spar over the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which came into force under President Bill Clinton.
Free trade has caused the loss of nearly a quarter of Ohio's manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2007, according to a recent study by the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition.
"It has worked in some parts of America," Clinton said recently. "It has not worked in Ohio."
Obama, while hammering Clinton for what he said is her backing of NAFTA, has vowed to use the "hammer of a potential opt-out" to force Canada and Mexico to reopen trade talks on the deal.
Ohio has also been hard hit by the Iraq war, as many of its sons and daughters, seeking a way out of the economic malaise have joined up, especially in the reserves.
In one week in 2005, 20 soldiers hailing from the state were killed, bringing the price of the war home to small communities which have been sending sons off to war for generations.
Clinton and Obama have both vowed to end the war if they are elected president.
But given Ohio's proud military heritage, and rural conservative leanings, the war may be a potent rallying point for likely Republican nomine John McCain, a former navy pilot and Vietnam war prisoner.
Demographically, the state should favor Clinton, though recent polls show her once wide lead eroding, as it is packed with blue-collar industrial workers who form her core power base.
But Obama triumphed last month in another economically hard-hit state she should have won -- midwestern Wisconsin, so her campaign is taking nothing for granted.
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