Published: May 10, 2008 12:32 am            

Clintons look to state for big win

Former president is ‘designated ambassador to rural America’

WAYNE — Hillary Rodham Clinton is counting on a victory in West Virginia, and it’s her husband’s job to run up the score.

Former President Bill Clinton traveled much of the state Thursday and Friday, hoping to inspire voters in out-of-the-way places like Sutton, Fayetteville and Williamson to turn out in large enough numbers to silence some of the national speculation that his wife’s bid for the Democratic nomination is essentially finished.

The former president may be the campaign’s best chance of scoring a big win in West Virginia. His popularity remains potent in the parts of West Virginia he visited.

Along Route 52 in Mingo and Wayne counties, crowds of schoolchildren and residents lined the road to wave flags and cheer as Clinton’s motorcade passed.

“I’m sort of the designated ambassador to rural America,” he joked to a crowd at Wayne High School.

Clinton also praised his wife’s ability to fight back.

“She just comes up like that Whac-A-Mole machine,” he said referring to her victories in Ohio, Texas and Indiana. “All the commentary class keeps saying ’I just whacked that mole. How does she keep coming up?’ “

Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd earlier at the Madison Fire Department, Clinton reiterated that large turnouts in West Virginia and Kentucky are essential to his wife’s chances of winning.

“She can win the popular vote, she’s clearly the most electable according to all the national polls,” he said. “Between now and August the superdelegates are going to have to do a lot of thinking if they want to win.”

Some people who turned out to hear Clinton said they still think his wife will be the nominee.

“If she takes West Virginia, Kentucky and Oregon, she still stands a good chance with the delegates,” Inas Evans said at an afternoon campaign stop by the former president in Evans’ hometown of Williamson. “And we just have to pray that the good Lord sees fit to give her to us as a leader.”

The Clinton campaign is hoping that West Virginia — a state rich in the white, older, working class voters who have doggedly supported her — will provide a lift after the damaging results of Tuesday’s primaries, in which she lost North Carolina and won Indiana by too small a margin to derail rival Barack Obama’s bid for the nomination.

At the Williamson stop, fliers were distributed to the crowd urging supporters to get out the vote. The fliers asked voters not only to vote early, but also to spread the word about their candidate by making phone calls, going door to door, waving signs and helping with campaign events.

Speaking in gymnasiums and fairgrounds in rural towns, Bill Clinton returned repeatedly to the words “people like you and places like this” as the keys that could help his wife stop Obama’s momentum.

West Virginia votes on Tuesday. Although Clinton campaigned here on behalf of his wife as recently as last week, on Thursday volunteers were circulating volunteer sign-up sheets for get-out-the-vote drives, underlining how crucial the campaign sees a large win here.

With Obama planning to visit the Mountain State on Monday, his supporters were doing much of the same. On Thursday, the campaign sent Max Kennedy, son of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, to Huntington and Pittsburgh Steelers’ owner Dan Rooney to Wheeling and Weirton.

On Friday, Obama campaign spokesman Thomas Bowen said details of Monday’s visit will be forthcoming.

Obama’s convincing lead in delegates and the popular vote is showing signs of dispiriting even some of Clinton’s supporters.

Jean Miller of Union came out in a downpour Thursday to see the former president speak in Fairlea, and although she proudly wore a Hillary Clinton sticker, she doesn’t have much hope for her candidate’s success.

“The way it is now, with the primaries that are left, she still won’t have enough delegates,” Miller said. “She can’t win, and sometimes I think it’s hurting our party.”

Miller said the longer the Democratic race continues, the better it is for the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

        

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