CHARLOTTE
The stop was not on the official campaign itinerary. But as John Edwards's motorcade rolled by a lighted-up football stadium here on drizzly recent evening, he called an audible.
Pulling up to a service gate, the convoy stopped, and Edwards jumped out in front of dozens of curious onlookers, walked briskly into the stadium and took a microphone.
"When I heard about this event going on, I just had to come out here," he told thousands of onlookers who had come to watch a marching-band competition between historically black colleges and now suddenly were in the middle of a political rally.
The Democratic vice presidential nominee kept his remarks brief; it was raining, and a band was waiting. Edwards pumped his fist and then ran toward the bleachers, where he jogged down the sideline, slapping hands with the crowd.
Then he left. Following his beefy Secret Service men like lead blockers, Edwards hustled back to his black sport-utility vehicle, which zoomed past a column of gold-and-maroon-costumed drummers and trumpeters.
Why Edwards "had to come out here" was left unexplained. He did not watch even a minute of the performances. But the symbolism was clear: The stop was a quick and easy way to get face time with a large number of African Americans in his home state, where his campaign faces an uphill climb.
Beginning in the primaries and now as John F. Kerry's running mate, Edwards has preached a theme that the Bush administration's policies have created "two Americas" -- one for the affluent and "one for everybody else."
On a week-long, nine-state swing, Edwards met crowds in regions diverse geographically but united in their concerns over a shrinking job pool for factory workers, rising costs of health care and of the war in Iraq. But if Edwards was addressing folks who all felt left out of the policymaking of the Bush White House, his campaign, in an unspoken way, revealed another "two Americas" -- the division by race.
Town hall meetings and rallies in places such as Roanoke, La Crosse, Wis., and Warren, Ohio, drew largely white crowds. To get to black audiences, Edwards seemed almost to go out of his way: stopping unexpectedly at the band competition or, the next morning, attending services at the University Park Baptist Church in Charlotte.
Race has not been a priority issue in the national debate in an era when national security gets more attention. As Edwards campaigns, race comes up almost tangentially -- in the way questions are asked by white and black audiences, or in whispered asides.
"See, he's just trying to show that he went to a black church," Toni Paul, 35, a nurse, told her three children as Edwards shook hands outside a Charlotte church. Asked about her comments by a reporter, Paul, who is black, said she was "unimpressed" that Edwards had stopped by "because I want to see what he will actually do for us, what he will do for the African American community in Charlotte."
Paul explained that she was concerned about drug addiction in the inner city. "There's not enough done to get rid of it," she said.
At a town hall meeting in Hough, a blighted inner-city neighborhood in Cleveland, Edwards tailored his stump speech in front of a predominantly black audience. He began by noting his and Kerry's pro-affirmative-action stance, his belief that young people who commit crimes should be rehabilitated and not locked up, and his disgust over predatory lending. These are themes he rarely mentions in front of white crowds.
