PHILADELPHIA - If Sen. John McCain defies the polls and wins Pennsylvania, it will be in part because of voters like Harry Klemash, 67, a Democrat who supported Sen. Hillary Clinton in the primary and is still not comfortable with Sen. Barack Obama.
"Obama has too many socialist policies, and he doesn't have enough experience," Klemash, a retired pressman, said yesterday as he walked his miniature poodle in Marconi Park in South Philadelphia, a largely white, Catholic, ethnic neighborhood.
With the presidential election a day away, the polls point to an Obama victory in Pennsylvania, with Obama holding a big lead in Philadelphia. But the polls are tightening, and McCain has shown no signs of letting up in the state.
As the Republicans try to map situations in which McCain could pull off an upset, they are focusing on Philadelphia's mostly white enclaves.
"I'm spending a lot of time in Philadelphia," said Robert Gleason, the chairman of the state Republican Party.
"We're working the Northeast," he said, referring to a largely white part of the city.
"We've got values voters up there, Catholics. My people up there say they can carry four to six wards this year, and four years ago, they carried none," Gleason said.
While wealthier whites in Philadelphia, especially in Center City, overwhelmingly support Obama, some blue-collar Democrats never made the transition from supporting Clinton. In South Philadelphia, McCain signs have cropped up in the windows of the low brick houses and on the postage-stamp lawns.
"Hillary won some of those white wards by 10-1," said Shanin Specter, son of Pennsylvania's Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, and a lawyer who is steeped in local politics. "Obama is likely to significantly underperform Kerry and Gore in those white row-house wards."
The Obama campaign is fully aware of the challenge.
"This is a tough ward," said Paul Rossi, 61, a data processor who lives in the neighborhood and is helping out at an Obama office that opened Saturday not far from Marconi Park.
"It's a matter of convincing people culturally that they won't be harmed by Obama," Rossi said.
It is no accident that Sen. Joe Biden, Obama's running mate, is being dispatched to speak in Marconi Park tomorrow night for his final rally of the campaign. Biden, who is Catholic, was chosen in part to appeal to these white, blue-collar Catholics. Biden is to be joined by members of the Philadelphia Phillies, who just won the World Series.
