NYT: Suddenly, North Carolina Is Facing Tighter Race
By JEFF ZELENY and JODI KANTOR
Published: May 3, 2008
RALEIGH, N.C. — Just days before the North Carolina primary, the Democratic presidential contest in this state is suddenly alive with a fresh air of competition, as Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton seeks to capitalize on a controversy that polls suggest has whittled away some of Senator Barack Obama’s support among white voters.
Not long ago, Mr. Obama was perceived to hold such an advantage that some Democrats here wondered whether Mrs. Clinton would bother to compete vigorously. But the candidates intensified their efforts in the final weekend — both appeared here on Friday evening — and Mr. Obama was eyeing a return on the eve of the election....
While a more vigorous fight is under way in Indiana, which also holds its primary election on Tuesday, supporters of both candidates agreed that the race here had taken on new urgency. Mr. Obama held a single-digit lead in several polls, which have narrowed in the last two weeks....
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Many voters in the state were just beginning to turn their attention to the Democratic primary at the very moment Mr. Obama’s glow was dimming. Tuning in to their televisions, they saw a candidate who bristled his way through a debate last month in Pennsylvania and, more recently, an incessant repetition of incendiary statements by his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., with whom Mr. Obama has now broken....
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Still, polling by the Clinton campaign continues to show her clearly trailing Mr. Obama, advisers emphasized, but they were holding out hope of at least narrowing the margin of an Obama victory to less than her margin in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, which she won by slightly less than 10 percentage points....
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/us/politics/03campaign.html
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