Clinton, Obama dash toward finish line

- Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton crisscrossed Pennsylvania today, seeking votes a day before the state’s key presidential primary.

It is the first presidential primary in six weeks, in what has become a grueling and increasingly testy Democratic nominating process. Clinton continues to lead according to polls released today, but the latest financial statements show her campaign is being outspent and is deep in debt.

Clinton began her day in Scranton, where her father was born and where she spent summers in the 1950s and 1960s. At a rally at an ornate former Masonic temple, the senator from New York urged about 500 supporters to get people to the polls on Tuesday.

“In the next 36 hours, do everything you can, convince people to go vote who say they are not going to vote,” Clinton said. “Take them to the polls. Call your friends and neighbors. Make the case for the kind of results that we desperately need in America again.”

Clinton stuck to her main campaign themes, promising to work for universal healthcare, affordable college educations, renewable energy and an end to the war in Iraq and took only a passing shot at Obama’s complaints about last week’s debate in Philadelphia.

Obama was also traveling in Pennsylvania and will meet with prospective voters at Montgomery Community College in Blue Bell, Pa., this afternoon.

“I’m not predicting a win,” Obama said in a morning interview with KDKA radio in Pittsburgh. “I am predicting it’s going to be close. And that we’re going to do a lot better than people expected.”

The latest poll shows Obama, who has heavily outspent Clinton in Pennsylvania, still trailing in the popular vote. Clinton leads Obama, of Illinois, 51% to 44% among likely voters in the Democratic primary, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released this morning.

Despite the growing nastiness of the campaign and a false step by Obama, using the word “bitter” to describe small-town voters, the race remains the same. Last week, the same poll had Clinton leading 50% to 44%.

“Pennsylvania voters apparently made up their minds a couple of weeks ago and nothing has happened since to change them. An extraordinary turnout effort by Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign could snatch this victory from Sen. Hillary Clinton, but that does not appear likely,” Clay F. Richards, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a statement posted on the poll’s website.

“Sen. Obama got off message after his ‘bitter’ remarks and never regained his momentum, giving Sen. Clinton the opening to fight another day in Indiana and North Carolina. She wins in Western Pennsylvania; he wins in the East. She gets Catholics, white women and blue-collar labor vote. He captures men, blacks and college grads – and enough delegates to keep his edge in the number that counts most.”

Obama remains about 140 delegates ahead of Clinton, 1,649 to 1,509, according to the latest Associated Press count, though other tallies show him ahead with different numbers. The Obama campaign this morning announced that Enid Goubeaux, a superdelegate from Ohio, has endorsed the Illinois senator.

There are 158 delegates at stake in Pennsylvania. To be nominated, a candidate needs 2,024 delegates.

Pennsylvania will likely not resolve the nomination, though Clinton needs a good showing to continue her campaign. At one point, polls showed her easily winning Pennsylvania by double digits, but her lead has been melting in recent weeks. She has repeatedly rebuffed calls to drop out of the race.

Her presidential campaign fell deeper into debt in March, and ended the month with less than a fourth of the money that Obama amassed for the primary.

In one indication of the fundraising predicament in which she finds herself, Clinton won key primaries in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island on March 4. But in the three days after those victories, Obama far out-raised Clinton – $5 million to $2.8 million.

In Clinton’s home state of New York, Obama hauled in $3.162 million to Clinton’s $2.3 million. The Illinois senator raised $4.56 million from California to Clinton’s $2.2 million in March.

Clinton’s debt reached $10.3 million, as her bill owing to the firm co-founded by her former chief strategist Mark Penn increased to almost $4.6 million, up from $2.5 million in March.

Penn stepped down from the campaign earlier this month after it was revealed that he consulted with Colombian government officials over a pending free trade agreement that Clinton questions.

Clinton ended March with $31.7 million in the bank, to Obama’s $51 million. But less than $10 million can be used for the primaries. She raised $22 million that can only be used in the general election. Obama has raised less than $10 million for the general election, leaving him with about $42 million for the primary.

In March, Obama spent $30.6 million to Clinton’s $22.3 million. He swamped her by raising an additional $41 million to her $20.2 million. Both vastly out-raised their GOP rival, Sen. John McCain, who raised $15.4 million in March.

Altogether, Obama has amassed $240 million for his presidential campaign, Clinton $194 million, and McCain $81 million.

On the Republican side, McCain, the presumptive presidential nominee, took his “Time For Action Tour” to Alabama, where he praised the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. The current campaign swing is designed to raise McCain’s profile among African Americans and the poor.

McCain recalled the beatings of civil rights marchers at Edmund Pettus Bridge and praised John Lewis, an organizer of the March 7, 1965 march and now a Democratic congressman from Georgia.

“There must be no forgotten places in America, whether they have been ignored for long years by the sins of indifference and injustice, or have been left behind as the world grew smaller and more economically interdependent,” McCain said outside the St. James Hotel, several hundred yards away from the historic bridge.

“In America, we have always believed that if the day was a disappointment, we would win tomorrow. That’s what John Lewis believed when he marched across this bridge,” McCain said.

michael.muskal@latimes.com

dan.morain@latimes.com

noam.levey@latimes.com

Muskal reported from Los Angeles and Levey from Scranton. Staff writer Maeve Reston contributed from the McCain campaign in Alabama.