Delegates: Biden key in Obama outreach to white working class

Published: August 27, 2008

DENVER - To beat John McCain, Barack Obama’s campaign knows it must win over white rural and working class voters who overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

“We’ve been working really hard against the ‘I’m just going to stay home’ or the ‘the country’s not ready’ (for an African-American president),“ attitudes, said September McCrady, an Obama delegate from Statesville, N.C., a blue-collar town hit hard in recent years by the loss of manufacturing jobs.

Despite early struggles, McCrady and other Obama backers from working class parts of the South think the addition of Sen. Joe Biden to the Democratic ticket will make it easier to connect with voters in the region.

Biden, who was born in blue-collar Scranton, Pa., and is among the poorest members of the Senate, addresses the Democratic convention tonight.

McCrady, a local party treasurer, recalled a conversation she overhead in the grocery store on the day Obama picked Biden. “They were like, ‘That’s going to do it for me’,“ she said of a voter who was on the fence about Obama.

While Biden will help, other Obama supporters say the campaign must do more to win over that key voting bloc. Other challenges remain.

“We know that the racial factor is a component for some union members,“ said Karen Ackerman, political director for the AFL-CIO.

Ackerman said the union’s direct-mail campaigns will aim to make some of its roughly 2.1 million members “more comfortable” with electing the first African-American president.

The union hopes to convince voters affected by the souring economy that his stance on pocketbook issues “trump any kind of hesitation they have about the color of his skin,“ Ackerman said.

Thomas Coley, a retired union technician from Greensboro, N.C., said that message is best directed at older workers and retirees.

“The retirement sector, simply because of the way they grew up—they are the ones who will have to look at the issues,“ Coley said.

Mike Evatt, a delegate from Seneca, S.C., who works at a food packaging plant, worries that Obama may have a hard time connecting with some of his white co-workers who think Obama is elitist.

By focusing on the economy, Obama can keep blue collar workers from tuning out the election or supporting John McCain, he said.

“The economy’s in shambles and I think people are going to vote more on their pocketbook than maybe they have been,“ he said.

Obama, who beat Clinton handily in the North Carolina primary, struggled in the largely white western third of the state. The region - the only part of the state Clinton won - is a hotbed of blue-collar conservatism.

Obama remains a “hard sell” in the region, said Clinton delegate Ethan Staats of Cashiers, N.C.

That’s where Biden can help, Staats said. “He does represent the blue collar voters,“ he said.

Amy Dominello contributed to this report.