Tuesday’s primaries are ‘game changers,’ Clinton says

WASHINGTON – Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton said today that next Tuesday’s primary contests could be “a game changer” for her campaign.

Clinton, who was scheduled to make five stops in North Carolina today, told rural voters at a morning event in Kinston, N.C., that they have a chance to make “a huge difference in what happens” next.

“The entire country will be looking to see what North Carolina decides,” she said.

Polls show a tightening race in North Carolina and Indiana between the New York senator and her Democratic rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. Both states hold primaries Tuesday.

“We’ve had a rough couple of weeks,” Obama conceded in a press conference this morning, alluding to the controversial anti-American remarks of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his own misstep in saying working-class voters are “bitter” about the economy. Describing his efforts to battle through “an awful lot of noise,” Obama said, “We are seeing terrific support” and predicted that “If I’m running the kind of campaign I want to run, I think that I will prevail.”

With the economy central to voter concerns, today’s jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department - which showed a slight drop in the unemployment rate, from 5.1% to 5% - provided fodder on the campaign trail.

Obama said the continuing loss of jobs is “troubling but it’s not surprising.”

Clinton disparaged the results. “People are saying, ‘Well, that’s better than we thought,’ ” she said. “Well, I don’t accept that at all. We’re not supposed to be losing jobs in America. We’re supposed to be creating jobs in America.”

And Republican John McCain said the numbers are an indication of “the economic challenges facing our economy” but that “the wrong course for our country would be to follow Sens. Obama and Clinton and their siren songs of higher taxes, bigger government, greater isolationism and a government-run healthcare system.”

Both Clinton and McCain are calling for a summer suspension of the 18.4-cent federal gas tax - an idea widely criticized by economists - and Obama said today they are both “reading from the same political playbook” and offering voters “a gimmick.”

At a town hall meeting at the Munster Steel Co. plant in Munster, Ind., Obama derided the plan, saying it would save consumers, at best, $28 for the summer, money that would go straight to the oil companies, which would likely only “jack up” prices after the holiday ends. He also argued that unless “you can magically impose a windfall profits [tax] on oil companies overnight to pay for the holiday,” the costs would come out of federal funding for roads, bridges and dams.

“It’s a shell game, literally,” Obama said, to applause from the plant’s workers, some wearing T-shirts saying “Teamsters for Change.”

Calling the proposal “an obvious election-year gimmick,” Obama said he’s betting voters “don’t want to line up behind an idea that’s more about trying to get a few votes than getting you meaningful relief.”

But Clinton said she wants Congress “to stand up and vote - are they for the oil companies or are they for you?” Introduced by North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley as “tougher than a lighter knot,” Clinton urged voters to decide who they would hire to do the job of president “based on proven results.” A lighter knot is a tree that has survived a forest fire.

One day after former Democratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew switched his support from Clinton to Obama, another former DNC chairman, Paul G. Kirk, also announced his support for Obama. Kirk had already been identified as an Obama supporter by several news organizations keeping track of superdelegate tallies.

johanna.neuman

@latimes.com