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The Texas Republican Party said that it plans to donate to charity the $1,500 rent it collected from a vendor who sold campaign buttons at the state convention that asked, "If Obama is president…will we still call it The White House?"

The Associated Press reports the state Republican Party said the vendor's rent will go to victims of the Midwestern floods.

"This vendor need not apply to another Texas GOP state convention," Texas GOP spokesman Hans Klingler said. "We will neither tolerate nor profit from bigotry."

The Texas Republican Party was also involved in a controversy over diversity issues in 1998, when it denied the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization of gay Republicans, a booth at its state convention.

"We don't allow pedophiles, transvestites or cross-dressers, either," then-GOP spokesman Robert Black said at the time.

*Update: The vendor who sold the racist button has apologized, The Dallas Morning News reports.

“It’s just been crazy,” Jonathan Alcox, who runs republicanmarket.com and had buttons and other items for sale at the GOP gathering, told the newspaper. “The point is we made a mistake. I realize that now. And I apologize.”

Texas held a complex hybrid primary/caucus back on March 4th, and this weekend the state's Democratic Party held county and senatorial district conventions. The conventions marked the latest step in the convoluted process that ultimately selects at-large delegates to go to the national convention in Denver this summer.

Even after this weekend, however, it remains unclear which Democrat will emerge from the Lone Star State with the most total delegates.

CBS News estimates that Hillary Clinton, who won the state's popular vote in the primary, leads Obama by three district-level delegates, with one delegate unallocated. But Barack Obama leads by six at-large delegates – the delegates that come from the caucus results. Seven at-large delegates remain unallocated.

The CBS News estimate thus has Obama leading in overall Texas delegates, though there are enough unallocated that those results could change.

The Obama campaign, having done its own math, has already predicted victory in the state.

"Despite the Clinton campaign's widespread attempts to prevent many Texans from participating in their district convention, the voters of Texas confirmed Senator Obama's important delegate win in the Lone Star State," Obama spokesman Josh Earnest said in a statement Saturday.

The Associated Press reports that Clinton's campaign, meanwhile, is trumpeting "its caucus successes in predominantly Hispanic regions along the Texas-Mexico border, as well as in South Texas and in rural counties."

The actual number of delegates won by Obama and Clinton will become official when the Texas Democratic Party holds its state convention in June.

Hillary Clinton did something last night she had not been able to do since New Hampshire – stop Barack Obama’s momentum in the Democratic primary contest. Or at least blunt it.

By winning three out of the four primary contests Tuesday night, Clinton almost certainly saved her campaign to fight on in a contest that now looks likely to stretch at least another seven weeks - until Pennsylvania votes.

Clinton can now boast of two more wins in big states, having carried Ohio and Texas (as well as Rhode Island), but she did nothing to erase Obama's sizeable delegate lead. In fact, she may have lost ground by the time all the delegates are awarded.

It's hard to see a path to the 2,025 delegate threshold needed to win the nomination for either candidate without the support of a sizable number of super delegates. So, the argument will rage on, muddied enormously by last night's results.

Despite the fact that Clinton once held enormous leads in Texas and Ohio, Obama came roaring into the evening on the precipice of ending the contest. The winner of 12 straight contests, he repeated his pattern of erasing those big leads. But, unlike big wins in Virginia, Maryland and Wisconsin, Obama couldn't get over the top and seal the deal.

"We're going on, we're going strong and we're going all the way," Clinton said in Ohio Tuesday night. "We're just getting started." Coming into the night, the New York Senator was expected to face increased pressure from party leaders and insiders to exit the race if she failed to win the two big states at stake. Now that she has - and added Rhode Island to boot - where such pressure would come from is less clear.

Obama's campaign argues that this is less a race about winning states and more about winning delegates. But winning pledged delegates alone probably won't get him the nomination, as long as Clinton remains in the race, splitting the haul to the end.

The recent sharpening of the argument Clinton has pressed, along with outside events, may have helped her stem the tide. Her campaign in Texas launched a much-discussed ad raising questions about Obama's readiness to handle a crisis as president. Obama's campaign got caught up in a series of revised statements about what one of his economic advisers said to a Canadian official about NAFTA. Meanwhile, the trial of Chicago developer Tony Rezko, a former Obama supporter, thrust that issue back into the headlines.

Whether any of these developments mattered to voters in Texas and Ohio is unclear, but they marked the first time Obama had entered such an important contest while facing tough questions. Having won a variety of states with large margins since Super Tuesday, it's fair to say Democrats last night may have cumulatively expressed some buyer's hesitation.

Here are some data from the early CBS News exit polls:

The economy was the top issue for Democratic voters in all four states voting today, and large majorities say the economy is in bad shape.

Ohio Democratic voters hold mostly negative views on U.S. trade with other countries: Eight in ten say trade takes jobs away from their state. In Texas, 58 percent say trade takes jobs away, while a quarter say U.S. trade with other countries creates jobs.

Thirty-two percent of Texas Democratic primary voters are Hispanic, according to the early exit polls -– up from the 24 percent in 2004. Eighteen percent are black, down from 21 percent in 2004.

In Ohio, 20 percent of Democratic primary voters are African American, up from 14 percent in 2004.

Obama is seen by voters in Texas and Ohio as the candidate most likely to beat the Republican nominee in November. A larger percentage of voters in both states say Clinton has attacked Obama unfairly than the other way around.

In both Ohio and Texas, a majority of Democratic voters say superdelegates should cast their vote based on the results of the primaries. A third say the superdelegates should support the candidate who has the best chance of winning in November.

For more exit poll results, see our main election story.

For a candidate looking to land a knockout blow the past couple days haven’t been what Barack Obama needed. As he and his aides complain that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is throwing their promised “kitchen sink” litany of attacks however, it isn’t all the doing of the candidate on the ropes.

While he should have been making a final push in Texas, where a win tonight could potentially seal the nomination, Obama instead found himself on the defensive, answering a barrage of questions about his relationship with an indicted Chicago developer and his campaign’s openness.

Obama’s past relationship with Tony Rezko, a former supporter whose federal corruption trial began yesterday, has been examined on and off for the past year but the candidate found himself being peppered with more questions at a press availability yesterday. While he pointed out the reams of stories that had been written about the topic and the mountains of questions he says he’s answered, Obama was asked more. And with the trial just getting under way, he’ll almost certainly face more in the days and weeks to come.

More troubling for Obama has been the manner in which the campaign dealt with what the Clinton campaign yesterday tried to brand “NAFTA-Gate.” When a Canadian television station reported that an Obama advisor had given a sort of wink to a consulate from the north in regards to the candidate’s tough talk on the trade deal, the campaign initially said it was completely false. Then it was acknowledged that an advisor did meet with the consulate but the reported content of the conversation was inaccurate. Then they said the advisor met in a capacity unrelated to the campaign.

The Canadian Embassy in Washington apologized for the fact that a key memo about the meeting had been made public and insisted that it is not the case that Obama has said one thing about trade while campaigning in Ohio and another behind closed doors. But it was the sight of this supposedly transparent and transformational campaign behaving so traditionally political that may linger from the episode. Deny, revise and extend is not changing politics as we know it.

The press has been accused in some quarters of taking it easy on the rising political phenom but you wouldn’t know it from events yesterday when, for perhaps the first time, Obama was caught in the middle of what had the makings of a full-fledged feeding frenzy. No doubt it’s partly a result of the Clinton campaign’s increasing attacks but it’s also part of the process of vetting the front-runner.

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In a new, two-minute ad running in Texas, Barack Obama tells voters he deserves their support in Tuesday's crucial Texas contest.

The spot, in which Obama addresses the camera in one long, nearly unbroken take, is called "Leader."

"For years, we’ve watched politicians divide us, seen lobbyists put their interests ahead of ours, and heard our leaders tell us what we want to hear, instead of what we need to hear," says Obama. "The question you have to ask yourself is this: Who can take us in a fundamentally new direction?"

"I’m running to finally solve problems we talk about year after year after year," he adds. "To end the division, the obscene influence of lobbyists, and the politics that value scoring points over making progress. We can’t afford more of that — not this year, not now."

Watch below:



The rest of the script:

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The Hillary Clinton campaign unveiled a pair of new ads this morning – one taking shots at rival Barack Obama, and the other pushing Clinton as the candidate who is going to bring jobs back to Ohio.

The first spot, "True," is a response to Obama's response to Clinton's controversial national security spot. (Got that?)

"Barack Obama says he has the judgment to be president," an announcer says in the new Clinton spot. "But as chairman of an oversight committee charged with the force of fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, he was too busy running for president to hold even one hearing." Watch it:



The other spot, "Partner," echoes the populist theme that Clinton has been pushing in recent weeks. It will run in Texas.

"It's time that the American worker had a partner in the White House," Clinton says in the spot, which also features testimonials about how Clinton will fight for jobs and families. "The wealthy and the well connected have had a president," Clinton says. "It's time the middle class had a president."

The Hillary Clinton campaign unveiled a pair of new ads this morning – one taking a shot at rival Barack Obama, and the other pushing Clinton as the candidate who is going to bring jobs back to Ohio.

The first spot, "True," is a response to Obama's response to Clinton's controversial national security spot. (Got that?)

"Barack Obama says he has the judgment to be president," an announcer says in the new Clinton spot. "But as chairman of an oversight committee charged with the force of fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, he was too busy running for president to hold even one hearing."

Watch it:



The other spot, "Partner," echoes the populist theme that Clinton has been pushing in recent weeks. It will run in Texas.

"It's time that the American worker had a partner in the White House," Clinton says in the spot, which also features testimonials about how Clinton will fight for jobs and families. "The wealthy and the well connected have had a president," Clinton says. "It's time the middle class had a president."

What has been by nearly any accounting an energizing primary process for Democrats may be reaching its limits. The candidacies of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, combined with the unpopularity of the Bush administration have raised Democratic hopes and prospects of taking back the White House in November. The mostly-positive campaign has also avoided the kinds of pitfalls and criticisms that can dog the eventual nominee into the general election – until now.

Clinton's decision to air an ad last week questioning Obama's readiness to handle those "3am" emergency phone calls as president should have Democrats concerned. Losses in Ohio and Texas for Clinton would almost certainly end her campaign but what if she does just well enough to argue she has enough of a chance to win to continue on?

It isn’t at all a stretch to see that ad as more a general election spot than an effective argument in the Democratic primary. It is almost certainly the same kind of argument presumptive GOP nominee John McCain will make should he face Obama in the fall. That's no secret, of course, but the longer this contest goes on, the more potential there is for real damage to be done to whoever winds up with the nomination.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, whose own campaign was never able to break through the Clinton-Obama domination of the race, has yet to endorse but was clear yesterday on his desire to get this fight over with when he appeared on CBS' Face the Nation. "I just think that D-Day is Tuesday," Richardson said. "We have to have a positive campaign after Tuesday. Whoever has the most delegates after Tuesday, a clear lead, should be, in my judgment, the nominee."

That leader will be Obama regardless of what happens in Ohio, Texas, Vermont and Rhode Island tomorrow night. Clinton cannot take the delegate lead and it's highly unlikely she will even make up much ground. CBS News' current delegate estimate has Obama with a 1,379 to 1,267 lead over Clinton, including super delegates. Because of the proportional allocation system in the Democratic primaries, Obama is almost certain to retain what Richardson called a "clear lead."

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Trying to set expectations is part of the political game. Everyone knows that's the media's job but it's worth a shot and today both campaigns did their level best at setting the bar for what constitutes a winning night on Tuesday.

Hillary Clinton's campaign, in a conference call with reporters, argued today that Barack Obama's campaign has "anointed themselves as the frontrunner" in this race and argued that if Obama fails to sweep all four states – Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont – then it will be an indication that Democrats are suffering some "buyer's remorse."

This is a different tune than the campaign was singing after losses in a string of state earlier this month when they identified Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania as states they were confident of winning. "This whole nominating process has come down to Texas and Ohio," Bill Clinton said last week. Now that recent polls show Obama with a slight lead in Texas and Ohio getting close, they're pitching a must-win scenario for Obama.

His campaign told reporters today that Clinton has already failed in her campaign's stated goal of narrowing the delegate gap on Tuesday regardless of the outcome. “They have a huge task in front of them, which is to try to erase this pledged delegate lead,” manager David Plouffe said. “They are going to fail by that measure." Because of the proportional delegate allocation system in the Democratic Party and the dual primary/caucus system in Texas, it's not unthinkable Obama could win more delegates even if he loses both big states. "If our lead after Tuesday is in the 160 range, they would need to win 74% of every remaining pledged delegate to get the pledged delegate contest back to even,” Plouffe said.

So, what will constitute a win for each? If Clinton were to win both Texas and Ohio, especially by a margin of five points or more, she will get a measure of victory. She will have added those two states to other big wins in California, New York and New Jersey and would have firmer ground on which to argue her general election strength. At the very least, she may stem a flood of super delegates towards Obama. But anything less would be hard for her campaign to explain. Obama will certainly retain a healthy delegate lead and needs only a win in Texas or Ohio for a win.

Then again, we'll only know for sure what's a win when we see it.