There were four other candidates, tsongas, jerry brown, tom harkin and robert kerrey. All fighting for the liberal vote. So bill clinton being the governor of a small southern state had some appeal to moderate+conservative democrats.
However he was third in iowa due to favorite son senator tom harkin being from that state. However a strong second showing in New Hampshire allowed him to dominate the rest of the primary.
However there were quite a few races that he did pretty terrible. And it wasnt until the southern states and rural heartland states started showing up that he became the clear winner.
https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1992&elect=1The race in the Liberal state of NY where Clinton was facing against then liberal favorite Jerry Brown. Jerry Brown said that if he was the nominee then he would have Jesse Jackson as his VP which offended jews because of a series of comments about jews made by Jesse Jackson. Clinton won the state because of liberal jewish primary voters voting for him. And from then on it cemented his status as the democrat nominee in waiting.
The sexual scandals did affect him, but he regained a lot of momentum when he kept telling the Press to focus on the race and not his sex life.
