Some local Republicans say they're not worried that it's Barack Obama and not John McCain campaigning in North Carolina nowadays, but former Sen. Bob Dole said Friday that McCain must come if he wants to win the state.
Obama and running-mate Joe Biden campaigned in Greensboro yesterday after the first of two presidential debates Friday night. The visit came on the heels of an Obama campaign stop in Charlotte last Sunday. Michelle Obama campaigned in Greensboro on Sept. 18.
Dole visited the Forsyth County GOP office on Friday during a swing through the state to boost the campaign of his wife, incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who is locked in a tight race with challenger Kay Hagan.
While in Winston-Salem, Bob Dole talked about the importance of North Carolina to the presidential race.
"This could be one of the key states," he told a gathering of about 75 Republicans who squeezed into the party headquarters on Cloverdale Avenue. Later, after signing some autographs and posing for some pictures, Dole said that the Obama campaign clearly sees North Carolina as a target and that McCain must campaign here.
North Carolina has voted Republican in the past seven presidential elections. Some local Republicans were saying yesterday that they are confident that the state will end up in the GOP column again this year and that they aren't worried that McCain hasn't visited since the convention.
"We don't have any concern about Obama coming in," said Bill Miller, the chairman of the local GOP. "He has been in and out so many times and that shows concern on his part and not on our part. It shows McCain has the upper hand here, which he does."
Pollsters aren't as sure. Though most polls had McCain with slight to substantial leads in the aftermath of the GOP convention, a poll taken just before Friday's debate had Obama up by two percentage points in North Carolina.
Joyce Krawiec of Kernersville, an officer with the N.C. chapter of the Federation of Republican Women, said she is sure that North Carolina is on McCain's list of places to campaign. Just how high the state gets on that list will depend on the overall needs of the campaign, she said.
"I think it is a tight race and I don't think that we can take it for granted at all," she said.
McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate has charged up the party, local Republicans said. Supporters who had McCain signs in their yards are coming in to get the new McCain-Palin signs, said Charona Remillard, the treasurer of the Forsyth County GOP.
"Folks who were on the fence before and weren't sure what they were going to do have been coming into the office to say that they are happy with his choice as vice president," Remillard said.
■ Wesley Young can be reached at 727-7369 or at wyoung@wsjournal.
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