Presidential Elections 2008

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

President Obama's campaign fund moved Wednesday to distance him from the burgeoning scandal involving Texas businessman R. Allen Stanford, donating the value of Stanford's $4,600 campaign contribution to a Chicago charity.

Barack Obama announced Saturday that he and his wife had resigned as members of their Chicago church in the wake of controversial remarks from its pulpit that have become a serious distraction to his presidential campaign. In a letter dated Friday to the pastor, the Rev. Otis Moss III, Obama said he and his wife, Michelle, had come to the decision "with some sadness."

Hillary Rodham Clinton has written off $13.1 million in personal funds she lent to her failed presidential campaign, new disclosure reports filed with the Federal Election Commission show. Clinton lent the money in several installments last spring as she fought Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, a battle she ultimately lost. The former first lady and New York senator has been working to pay off the debt to clear the way for confirmation as Obama's secretary of State.

Presidential election exit polls showed that the economy was uppermost on the minds of most Americans. But when Baghdad-based Army Maj. Ian Howard cast his ballot, his top concern was whether this would be his last deployment to Iraq. So Howard, a lifelong Republican, threw his support to Barack Obama, who has advocated a swift withdrawal of U.S. forces. "I don't want to come back here for another tour," Howard said Wednesday.

A political insider tapped by Barack Obama to vet potential running mates resigned Wednesday, saying he wanted to prevent a controversy over his personal finances from hurting the Democratic presidential candidate's campaign. The unpaid advisor, Jim Johnson, was chosen by Obama last month to serve on a three-member team screening prospective nominees for vice president.

California, the ATM for politicians nationwide, has spit out cash for Barack Obama at an extraordinary clip. One of every five dollars he has raised in itemized contributions to his campaign has come from the Golden State. At last count, in mid-October, the Democratic presidential nominee had withdrawn $84 million from California, or 20% of his contributions of more than $200 -- the threshold at which campaigns must disclose detailed information about donors.

Race has bedeviled this country from the start, when the Founding Fathers ducked the slavery issue for fear of killing the nation in its cradle. Obviously, much has changed. For one thing, Americans are seriously weighing the prospect of elevating a black man to the White House in November. But as this past week's debate over "the race card" illustrates, there is still no subject in American politics as fraught as the color of a candidate's skin.

The elementary school moms didn't ask a lot of questions about this man Bill. They were too eager to tell him -- to tell anybody -- about the loose and snarling pit bulls, the gun-toting gangsters, and the dogcatchers and police who always seemed to come too late. The principal, Helena Lazo, had introduced him simply: "Bill nos va a ayudar." Bill is going to help us.

In his books, speeches and campaign commercials, Sen. Barack Obama often harks back to his days as a civil rights attorney. It is fundamental to his autobiography, displayed on his campaign website and woven into his appeals for votes. In one of his television ads leading up to the South Carolina primary, Obama recalled "working as a civil rights attorney to make sure that everybody's vote counted."

James Dillon, a onetime Republican activist who grew disgusted with politics, was so inspired by Barack Obama's candidacy that he joined the campaign's massive volunteer army, hosting house parties and recruiting supporters. But beyond influencing the November election, Dillon thought he was joining a new political movement that would be mobilized for big goals -- to end poverty or fix the healthcare system, or maybe to end the U.S. reliance on foreign oil.

More than 60% of Californians who were eligible to vote cast ballots in the Nov. 4 presidential election, the highest turnout since Richard Nixon and George McGovern competed for the office in 1972, elections officials reported Tuesday. The total includes all qualified citizens, including those who had not registered to vote. The percentage of registered voters who cast ballots statewide was 80.6% -- 81.9% in Los Angeles County.

A rainbow runs through Tyler Winograd's veins. His mother, Maile, is half black and half Chinese American. His father, Jeff, is white and grew up Jewish in Evanston, Ill. "I always check 'Other' on my college applications," Winograd said. But on election day, Winograd was filling out a different kind of form. The 18-year-old accompanied his parents to the polling place across the street from their Glencoe, Ill., home to cast a ballot for president for the first time.

A Roman Catholic priest told parishioners they should not take Holy Communion if they voted for Barack Obama because the Democrat supports abortion, and supporting him "constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil." The Rev. Jay Scott Newman said in a letter distributed Sunday at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville that they were putting their souls at risk.

In his first interview since he conceded the presidential election, John McCain said that Sarah Palin did not damage his campaign, and he dismissed aides' anonymous criticism of her. "I'm so proud of her and I'm very grateful she agreed to run with me," McCain told Jay Leno during a "Tonight Show" interview. "She inspired people; she still does." McCain alluded to the difficult political environment for Republicans nationwide and said, "I could tell you a lot of things that we may have made mistakes on."

Regardless of what I did for a living, I would have been following the presidential campaign -- obsessively. It's a deep-seated disorder, one that probably took root when the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon face-off unfolded before my 9-year-old eyes. As this similarly memorable race played out, I was allowed a vantage point made to order for such a character defect: blogger. It's an evolving craft, with few set-in-stone rules.

Memories of 1980 at Occidental College's Haines Hall have the standard fragments of the era: stereos blasting the B-52's through the dorm, pot-fueled bull sessions about the revival of draft registration, late-night cramming for economics exams. That otherwise private nostalgia took on public significance this month when a former Haines Hall resident from Hawaii known at the time as Barry announced that he was forming an exploratory committee to run for president of the United States. U.S. Sen.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, who are running for president as economic populists, are benefiting handsomely from Wall Street donations, easily surpassing Republican John McCain in campaign contributions from the troubled financial services sector. It is part of a broader fundraising shift toward Democrats, compared to past campaigns when Republicans were the favorites of Wall Street.

As he vaulted into national acclaim with his 2004 Democratic convention speech, Barack Obama directly took on the assumption that his party should cede religious voters to the Republicans. "We worship an awesome God in the blue states," he said, pointedly adopting words from a song familiar to churchgoers, particularly younger ones.

As they review the results of Tuesday's election victories and begin looking toward future campaigns, some Democrats have settled on a rallying cry: Texas is next. It sounds improbable for the Republican bastion that produced President Bush and served as an early laboratory for Karl Rove's hard-nosed tactics.