After One of Campaign's Roughest Patches, Obama Tried to Change the Narrative

Gallery

Democrats Split Indiana and North Carolina

Sen. Barack Obama won North Carolina's presidential primary by a wide margin Tuesday, while Sen. Hillary Clinton narrowly won in Indiana.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

The issue ignited quickly, and primary voters were not the only Democrats paying attention. Sen. Evan Bayh, Clinton's most effective Hoosier weapon, had been leaning hard on his state's four freshman House Democrats, urging them to stay out of the race until the voters had spoken -- even though he was leading the Clinton charge. Obama aides were convinced that they would pick up the endorsement of Rep. Brad Ellsworth, a popular former sheriff from the expected Clinton stronghold around Evansville. But Ellsworth did not come through, nor did Rep. Joe Donnelly, whose Democrat-rich district stretches through the state's heartland, south from South Bend.

But Rep. Baron P. Hill, a southern Indianan from Clinton country, had been listening to the gas tax debate closely. He spoke with each of his district's 20 Democratic country chairs. He was impressed by the surge of support among students at Indiana University, a fixture of his district. Most important, he spoke repeatedly with former Indiana congressman Lee H. Hamilton, who co-chaired the Sept. 11 Commission and who is backing Obama.

Obama not only picked up Hill's endorsement, but also won Hoosier and former Democratic Party chairman Joe Andrew from Clinton's column, giving his Wright recovery a boost. Both superdelegates cited Obama's opposition to the tax holiday as a factor. Congressional leaders endorsed his position, and editorial boards hailed the Obama stance as principled and farsighted. The issue was featured prominently in a two-minute closing ad that the Obama campaign aired in North Carolina and Indiana.

Not everyone was convinced it would work. Rep. Melvin Watt (N.C.), an Obama supporter, said Monday that he was holding his breath.

Cornell Belcher, an Obama pollster who declined to give out his polling numbers, said: "The whole gas tax thing, it isn't about whether it's working in the polls."

Indeed, voters who chose a candidate in the past three days broke decisively for Clinton in Indiana, an indication that the gas tax debate may have worked against Obama in the state.

What it certainly did was change the subject from Wright and patriotism back to policy. By Sunday afternoon, the debate about Clinton's proposal had reached the kitchen tables of Indiana. Jody Coleman, a 33-year-old factory worker who lives in Elkhart, met Obama when he spent an afternoon knocking on doors in this working-class neighborhood, and the two had a long conversation about alternative energy sources. Coleman was unimpressed with Clinton's proposal. "What's it going to do for one day?" he said. "That's all it would help me."

But there were still niggling concerns, large tactical arguments and small failures of organization that were looming larger as his big lead in North Carolina polls shriveled, and Indiana, a state his campaign once thought was his to lose, began looking lost. Some consultants thought Obama took exactly the wrong message from Pennsylvania, that the problem was not that he had gone negative but that he had not gone negative enough.

Then there were the organizational issues. In Robeson County, N.C., where as much as 40 percent of the population is Lumbee Indian, Lumbee tribal leaders had been waiting for two weeks to hear Obama's position on federal recognition of the tribe.

Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea had already been to the county before Eureka Gilkey, Obama's North Carolina campaign director, called Watt to dispatch him to the impoverished area with a promise of support. He spent Sunday jumping from church to church, but, he conceded, "it appeared [Clinton aides] were sending surrogates with more gravitas."

Obama campaign officials had hoped to take North Carolina in a romp, and be able to focus all their attention on Indiana, Watt said. Instead, they were scrambling to throw in resources at the last minute.

"There were a number of surrogates deployed as scientifically as they could at first, but when you get to the last days of a campaign, you send people wherever you can send them," Watt said. "It becomes a little bit less scientific and a little bit more haphazard."

To Obama aides and supporters, such hand-wringing makes no sense. The candidate emerged last night with his path to the nomination unaltered, and his refusal to go negative will ease the task of wooing Clinton voters into the Obama fold this summer.

"We're just going to have to make it very clear that this son of a single mom on food stamps, a guy who made a very self-conscious choice to be a community organizer for, what, $12,000 a year, is hardly an elitist," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).

"You don't like to fall across the line. You want to sprint through the tape," said an Obama supporter on Capitol Hill. "But at the end of the day, a win is a win is a win."