White House race shifts to next battles

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (Reuters) - The U.S. presidential race shifted to new battlegrounds on Sunday, as Republican John McCain looked for momentum from a big win and top Democrats paid homage to slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

McCain flew to Florida, which holds the next Republican contest on January 29, and said his win over rival Mike Huckabee on Saturday in South Carolina would give him a boost toward the nomination for the November election.

"I think we are doing very well. I think Florida is very important. I don't know if it's a must-win, but it's certainly a very, very important race," the Arizona senator told reporters before leaving South Carolina.

Florida marks the re-emergence of Rudy Giuliani, whose once large lead in national polls disappeared as he sat out the early battles. The former New York mayor has staked his future on Florida, where polls show a tight race with McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

"We're ready for everybody to come down here, join us," Giuliani said on ABC's "This Week."

The Democratic presidential contenders turned their attention to South Carolina, where Saturday's primary will give Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama a new venue for their back-and-forth battle for the nomination after Clinton's weekend win in Nevada.

More than half of the voters in South Carolina's Democratic primary are expected to be black, and on the eve of a national holiday honoring King's birthday both candidates spoke at black churches.

At the civil rights leader's home Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Obama quoted King's belief that "unity is the great need of the hour" and said it was still needed today to overcome a deficit in America.

"I'm talking about a moral deficit. I'm talking about an empathy deficit," Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black president, said before heading to South Carolina for an afternoon rally.

'WE CANNOT WALK ALONE'

"I'm taking about an inability to recognize ourselves in one another, to understand that we are our brother's keeper, we are our sister's keeper," he said. "In the struggle for opportunity and equality, we cannot walk alone."

Clinton, a New York senator who would be the first woman U.S. president, spoke to a predominantly black Baptist church in New York City's Harlem and reminded the congregation King was supporting striking garbage workers when he was assassinated in Memphis in 1968.

"He was leading the charge for economic justice," she said. "He understood that we can push the limits of our laws, we can eliminate on paper so many of the discriminatory practices that have unfortunately marked and marred our history, but we have to do so much more."

Neither party has established a clear front-runner in the race to pick the two candidates to contest the November 4 election to succeed Bush, as the first major state-by-state battles produced multiple winners.

After South Carolina and Florida, both parties turn their attention to the February 5 "Super Tuesday" round of 22 state contests, a shift from the intimate politics of early voting states to coast-to-coast flights and big-budget advertising campaigns.

In Nevada on Saturday, Clinton beat Obama in a close struggle that featured voting in the state's famed casino hotels. The pair had split the first two Democratic contests and ended up disputing who held the upper hand in Nevada.

Although Clinton won more votes, Obama's strength in some areas outside Las Vegas gave him a projected 13 national convention delegates to Clinton's 12.

Delegates select the presidential nominee at the party convention in August. The Nevada delegate slate will not be set until April and the count could change before then, state party officials said.

Former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards was a distant third in Nevada but promised to push on. All three Democratic contenders will appear in a debate on Monday in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

"When you get knocked down, you have got to get up. You have got to get up and start fighting again," Edwards, who won South Carolina during his failed presidential run in 2000, told CNN.

Romney won a Republican contest in Nevada on Saturday that his rivals largely skipped to focus on South Carolina.

McCain's win in South Carolina was sweet revenge in the state that derailed his 2000 presidential bid in a bitter battle that set George W. Bush on a path to the White House.

More than half of the voters in South Carolina were religious conservatives, but that was not enough to give the edge to Huckabee, a Baptist preacher and former Arkansas governor whose Iowa win was fueled by evangelical support.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland in South Carolina, Matt Bigg in Atlanta, Jeff Mason in New York; Editing by David Wiessler)

(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at blogs.reuters.com/trail08/)