The Pennsylvania Showdown

April 21, 2008
Trailing in Pennsylvania, Obama Sharpens Tone
By JEFF ZELENY and KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
READING, Pa. — Senator Barack Obama sharpened his tone against Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on Sunday as the six-week Pennsylvania primary contest raced to a close, with the rivals marshaling extensive resources in a battle for undecided voters and delegates that could determine whether the Democratic nominating fight carries on.

In television commercials and in appearances before crowded rallies, Mr. Obama, of Illinois, cast his opponent in one of the most negative lights of the entire 16-month campaign, calling her a compromised Washington insider. Mrs. Clinton, of New York, responded by suggesting that Mr. Obama’s message of hope had given way to old-style politics and asked Democrats to take a harder look at him.

The fresh skirmishing unfolded across one of the most complicated battlegrounds in the race for the Democratic nomination. Both campaigns deployed thousands of paid workers, volunteers and surrogates to strategic points across the state.

Mr. Obama, seeking to lock up the nomination, was outspending Mrs. Clinton two-to-one on television advertising in the state, with a barrage of commercials assailing her health care plan and suggesting that she was captive to special interests. Mrs. Clinton fired back on Sunday, criticizing his health care plan and saying he was going negative to mask his poor performance in last week’s debate.

Voters in Pennsylvania go to the polls Tuesday, the first to cast ballots since Mr. Obama won the Mississippi primary on March 11. The gap made for the longest campaign in a single state since the opening bell of the presidential contest, in Iowa on Jan. 3, and left time for the candidates to bruise each other, and themselves.

“There’s been a lot of discussion over the last several days about how this campaign gets so negative, how we get distracted, how we exploit divisions,” Mr. Obama told voters in Reading on Sunday afternoon. “Look, our campaign’s not perfect. There’ve been times where, you know, if you get elbowed enough, eventually you start elbowing back.”

A variety of polls show Mrs. Clinton with a lead over Mr. Obama of five or six percentage points, but that is down from about 16 points only weeks ago. Strategists on both sides agreed the race seemed to be narrowing. The chief questions were whether the increasingly pitched campaign would help Mrs. Clinton stop her slide or whether Mr. Obama had regained his momentum.

At a campaign stop in Bethlehem on Sunday, Mrs. Clinton reminded voters about last week’s Democratic debate, in which Mr. Obama was repeatedly on the defensive about recent gaffes and incendiary remarks made by his former pastor. “It’s no wonder my opponent has been so negative these last few days of this campaign,” she said, “because I think you saw the difference between us.”

Mr. Obama was using his fund-raising advantage to pay for a multimillion-dollar campaign that included sophisticated demographic targeting to find supporters in smaller cities across the state, particularly ones with pockets of black voters.

Yet his team was also relying on old-fashioned tools, including sending supporters door-to-door, renting sound trucks to drive through urban neighborhoods and having volunteers serve as “town criers” to pass out literature on city buses.

In their final drives, both candidates barnstormed Pennsylvania with their eye on two different maps: one for the popular vote, the other for delegates. Mrs. Clinton desperately needs to win both to narrow the Obama campaign’s edge on both fronts.

Mr. Obama is also focused on winning delegates to maintain his lead, but he also wants to show he can draw support among the white, working-class voters who have gravitated to Mrs. Clinton.

In an atmosphere where both sides are hedging their expectations, Clinton aides have refused to say what margin of the popular vote she needs to win to stay in the race. The contest for delegates, who are awarded proportionally based on how well the candidates perform in each Congressional district, is likely to be close, but the pressure is on Mrs. Clinton to get at least 50 percent of the delegates.

“The fact that Hillary is crisscrossing a lot of Congressional districts, and Bill is, too, is proof that while everyone is focused on the vote percentages statewide, there is a war for delegates,” said Tony Podesta, who has run several statewide races in Pennsylvania and supports Mrs. Clinton, referring to former President Bill Clinton. “She needs to find ways of closing the delegate gap; she can’t go through all these contests and split the delegates 50-50.”

The intensity of Mr. Obama’s campaign and his willingness to air negative attacks in recent days suggest he harbored hope of ending the Clinton campaign here or avoiding a major loss that would keep the race alive.

Representative Chaka Fattah of Philadelphia, who represents the most delegate-rich district in the state, in Philadelphia, and who supports Mr. Obama, said, “At the end of day, if we can carry more delegates and not have her win in the double digits, that would be great.”

In a new advertisement Sunday, Mr. Obama accused the Clinton campaign of employing “11th hour smears” by suggesting that he takes money from federal lobbyists. He said he had never accepted such money, “not one dime.” After ticking through a list of criticisms against Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Obama asked the crowd at an evening rally, “What kind of inspirational message is that?”

In the final days of the campaign, Mrs. Clinton concentrated on the state’s working-class industrial regions, where she hoped to drive up her support among older, blue-collar voters who are concerned broadly about their economic condition and national security. These voters have proved the most elusive for Mr. Obama, which has led some to question whether he can win their support against Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Her chief message — captured by an appearance in front of a fire house in suburban West Chester, where she gave a grim assessment of the dangers facing the country — was that she is tough enough to be commander in chief and to take on Mr. McCain, and that Mr. Obama is not.

She has also spent considerable time in the populous Philadelphia suburbs, trying to break through to upscale women, whose gender might lead them to support her but whose class, as measured by income and education, might tilt them toward Mr. Obama. About 40 percent of the state’s Democratic voters live within the Philadelphia media market.

Polls suggest that in the suburbs, Mrs. Clinton is still battling low favorability ratings. It was telling the other day at a forum at Haverford College when she was asked what canvassers should tell voters on her behalf. “Oh, just knock on the door and say, ‘She is really nice,’ ” Mrs. Clinton said. “Or you could say, ‘She is not as bad as you think.’ ”

For his part, Mr. Obama has devoted his time to those same suburbs and reached beyond them to the exurbs, trying to appeal to well-educated, liberal, affluent voters for whom the war in Iraq is a central issue. While his most reliable base is made up of black voters, he has steered clear of Mr. Fattah’s district, the heavily black area of Philadelphia in which Mr. Obama expects to win the most votes and the most delegates. Instead, he has campaigned in each corner of the state, making forays into Mrs. Clinton’s base and trying to capture some of those delegates.

On Sunday evening, he staged a rally in Scranton, where Mrs. Clinton has deep family roots, accompanied by a native son of the city, Senator Bob Casey, who may help with the state’s Catholic, blue-collar voters.

“He’s made progress,” Mr. Casey said. “That doesn’t mean that progress is enough to win the primary here.”

The field operations of both campaigns have added 327,000 Democrats to the voter rolls, many of them 18 to 34 years old. A subsequent poll found 62 percent of the new voters said they planned to vote for Mr. Obama.

Analysts said that the voter-registration drive was an important dry run for Mr. Obama’s field operation in Pennsylvania and that the Obama team may now have the edge in the intense ground game leading up to Tuesday’s vote.

The Obama forces are bolstered by the Service Employees International Union, which is spending nearly $1 million for a door-to-door canvassing operation.

“From what I’ve seen in terms of organization and coordination, the Obama people have run a better campaign,” said Larry Ceisler, a Democratic strategist not affiliated with either campaign (though he has given the maximum amount of money to both).

Mrs. Clinton has employed more of an endorsement strategy and boasts the backing of 100 mayors in the state, including those in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Bill Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, are each holding four or five events a day. And a “Women for Hillary” operation is rotating around the suburbs.

Neil Oxman, a media consultant here, estimated that by the end of the six-week campaign, Mr. Obama will have spent more than $9 million on television and Mrs. Clinton will have spent almost $4 million.

Counting what they are spending on direct mail and other get-out-the-vote efforts, he estimates they will have spent $20 million by Tuesday, making this by far the most expensive presidential primary in state history.

Jeff Zeleny reported from Reading, Pa., and Katharine Q. Seelye from Philadelphia.