Obama gains more ground in Texas

AUSTIN — As the smoke cleared from this weekend's regional Democratic conventions, Barack Obama emerged with a majority of the state's at-large presidential nominating delegates and possibly a majority of all Texas delegates.

But Hillary Rodham Clinton's supporters vowed Sunday to continue the fight for Texas delegates all the way to this summer's state party convention, promising to cut his lead in delegates.

The actual number of delegates awarded to Obama and Clinton will not be official until the state party convention meets June 5-7 in Austin. The results of Saturday's regional conventions were still being tallied Sunday, but Obama was winning about 58 percent of the delegates to the state convention.

About 100,000 people turned out for about 280 county and senatorial district conventions on Saturday. The final conventions were being held Sunday in Collin County.

While participants waited in long lines and spent hours helping to elect presidential nominating delegates, the chaos wasn't nearly as bad as the March 4 caucuses, which attracted about 1 million voters, Democratic Party spokesman Hector Nieto said.

"Overall, (the conventions) went pretty well," Nieto said. "It was democracy in action."

Clinton won the popular vote in the March 4 primaries and a majority of the primary-allotted delegates, giving her a 65-61 lead.

Obama's campaign claimed he came out of this weekend's conventions with a 38-29 at-large delegate lead, giving him a five-pledged-delegate lead over Clinton.

"We can confirm now that Barack Obama won Texas," said Obama spokesman Josh Earnest.

Clinton state Chairman Garry Mauro conceded that Obama is likely to have a 37-30 advantage in the at-large delegates, which would give Obama a total lead of three pledged delegates over Clinton.

Mauro said Clinton may be able to take at least two national nominating convention delegates away from Obama at the state convention. She is working on convincing a majority of the 351 automatic state convention delegates to support her, Mauro said.

"If we're in a hot race on June 6, we expect to pick up more delegates," Mauro said. "I believe at the end of the day we will run either dead even or come out ahead in the delegate count."

In the national delegate fight, Obama is leading 1,623 to Clinton's 1,499, according to the Associated Press, with 2,025 needed to win.

The automatic delegates to the state convention are party leaders, the members of the State Democratic Executive Committee and county chairs who get to attend the convention as a delegate and can vote for the presidential candidate of their choice. These automatic delegates will make up about 4 percent to 5 percent of the total state convention population.

Earnest said he hopes the automatic candidates to the state convention will reflect their constituents when they make their decisions.

Those delegates "will all make their own decisions, but we would expect them to reflect the will of the voters, especially in these caucuses," Earnest said. There also are a group of national superdelegates from each state who automatically attend the national convention. Clinton has been trying to clinch the nomination by securing a majority of the superdelegates.

The national superdelegates are members of Congress, the Democratic National Committee and certain party leaders.

There are 35 superdelegates from Texas. At present, 12 are for Clinton, 10 for Obama and 13 are uncommitted.

r.g.ratcliffe@chron.com