N.C. primary is heating up

RALEIGH

The presidential primary in North Carolina intensified yesterday, one day after Sen. Hillary Clinton convincingly beat Sen. Barack Obama in Pennsylvania.

Clinton's win Tuesday guaranteed that the race for the Democratic nomination would continue for at least two more weeks, and perhaps much longer. The political world is now focused on May 6, the date when both North Carolina and Indiana will hold primaries.

The Clinton campaign said yesterday that "the tide is turning" away from Obama and toward Clinton, and it said it was on track to raise $10 million in the 24-hour period after Clinton's Pennsylvania victory. That would be Clinton's best-ever, single-day fundraising total.

The Obama campaign said that Pennsylvania did not change the dynamics of the race, in which Obama is still the clear leader by almost any measuring stick. Here in North Carolina, the campaign announced the names of nearly 50 Obama supporters who had previously backed John Edwards in his unsuccessful run for president. The list includes Ed Turlington, the national chairman of Edwards' 2004 presidential campaign, as well as many state legislators, businesspeople and community leaders.

Meanwhile, the N.C. Republican Party entered the fray by unveiling a controversial TV ad that features a clip of Obama's former pastor excoriating the United States.

In the clip, which became infamous when it was first revealed nationally last month, Obama's former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Chicago, shouts during a sermon, "No, no, no! Not God bless America! God damn America!"

After playing that clip, the ad goes on to criticize the two major Democrats running for governor: "Now Bev Perdue and Richard Moore endorse Barack Obama," a narrator said. "They should know better. He's just too extreme for North Carolina."

The ad from the N.C. Republican Party can be viewed online at www.journalnow.com/trailmix.

The spot, which is titled "Extreme," instantly put the N.C. Republican Party at odds with national Republicans, including Sen. John McCain, the expected Republican presidential nominee, who criticized the ad as offensive.

In an e-mail yesterday to Linda Daves, the chairwoman of the state party, McCain said that the ad is divisive, distracting and incompatible with "the very high standards we should hold ourselves to in this campaign." Both McCain and the Republican National Committee asked the state party not to run the ad on television.

But Daves said yesterday that she intends to go ahead as planned. The ad is scheduled to run statewide on Monday in the 6 p.m. time slot, she said. She said that the party has not decided if it will continue running the ad after that.

Daves said she understands why the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee view the ad as negative and do not want to be associated with it, but she said that her first priority is statewide races in North Carolina, and she believes that the ad raises legitimate questions about the Democrats running for governor.

"It is about two gubernatorial candidates who endorsed someone who has allowed himself to sit under the tutelage of extreme anti-American teaching. And it is about judgment and leadership," Daves said.

Perdue and Moore said through spokespeople yesterday that they stand by their endorsements of Obama. A Perdue spokesman called the ad "gutter politics." A Moore spokeswoman said that Moore concurs with McCain's rebuke of the ad.

The N.C. Democratic Party, in a press release, called the ad racist. Jerry Meek, the chairman of the N.C. Democratic Party, said he believes that the ad is attempting to exploit racial bias among white voters.

"It clearly is the case that this is part of the ‘Southern strategy.' It's been around for a long time. This is a page directly out of something that Jesse Helms would do," Meek said.

The Southern strategy refers to the political strategy, beginning in the 1960s, in which Republicans tried to appeal to Southern white voters through opposition to civil-rights legislation and through other racially charged tactics.

Daves sharply disputed that the ad has anything to do with race, saying that if Clinton's pastor had made similarly incendiary remarks and then Perdue and Moore had endorsed her, the state Republican Party would also run an ad.

"They use that term ‘play the race card.' That is one of the best ways in the world to distract people from the issue at hand," Daves said. Obama has repudiated the controversial remarks of his former pastor but has also said that he cannot disown the man himself. While campaigning in Indiana yesterday, Obama was asked about the North Carolina ad.

"My understanding is that the Republican National Committee and John McCain have both said the ad is inappropriate," Obama said, according to his campaign. "I take them at their word. And I assume that if John McCain thinks that it's an inappropriate ad, that he can get them to pull it down since he's their nominee and standard-bearer."

Amid the flap over the ad, both Clinton and Obama continued campaigning yesterday and were clearly looking ahead to the two May 6 states, which are critical for both candidates in different ways.

Former President Bill Clinton was campaigning for his wife in five North Carolina cities yesterday, and Hillary Clinton is scheduled to campaign today in Fayetteville and Asheville, and Friday in Jacksonville before heading to Indiana.

Obama was in North Carolina last week and has not announced when he will return to the state.

But his campaign sent out an e-mail to North Carolina supporters yesterday emphasizing the state's importance and urging people to take advantage of the early-voting period before the primary.

"Starting today," the e-mail begins, "the eyes of the country are watching North Carolina."

■ James Romoser can be reached at 919-210-6794 or at jromoser@wsjournal.com.

Journal Graphic by Nicholas Weir - Click to enlarge