Posted on May 6

GARY, Ind. - Stephanie Tubbs Jones, an Ohio congresswoman and arguably Sen. Hillary Clinton's most notable black supporter, agreed to hold a campaign event at a bowling alley here on Friday.

The occasion was designed to introduce Clinton's campaign to the black community, a group that has overwhelmingly supported the New York senator's opponent, Sen. Barack Obama.

The problem was that Jones never showed up. And according to Antwan Thorbs, owner of Dunes Bowl in Gary - the city with the nation's highest proportion of black residents at 85 percent - her appearance wouldn't have stirred much excitement for Clinton anyway.

"I told people that Hillary herself might even show up," said Thorbs, a self-proclaimed "Obamanite." "They honestly didn't care. I think I speak for the city of Gary when I say that this is Obama country."

Asked whether the 30 or so patrons that came to the bowling alley that night were there to see Tubbs Jones, Thorbs said, "I'm sure they were only coming to bowl."

When asked why she didn't attend, Jones said her flight into Indiana was cancelled.

On some level, Thorbs's comments illustrate the difficulty each campaign has had in winning over voting blocs that have typically flocked to the other candidate. For the Clinton campaign, the problem has been drawing support from black voters. To a lesser extent, the Obama camp has struggled in its efforts to win over white working-class voters who lack college degrees.

To compensate for a lack of support in those constituencies, both presidential candidates have made concerted efforts in the last few days to reach the types of voters they've lost in past contests.

Obama, who at one point in his campaign commonly spoke before crowds of 20,000 and greater, has instead been talking to much smaller groups in town hall meetings.

The shift in Obama's campaigning began shortly after the Illinois senator encountered a firestorm last month when comments he made at a closed-door fundraising event in San Francisco surfaced on the Internet.

In an effort to explain why he had performed poorly among working-class whites in earlier contests, Obama told the event's attendees that many small town, white working class voters "get bitter" and "cling to guns or religion" to explain their frustrations with other things. Clinton and presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain both called Obama's statement elitist in nature, saying he was "out of touch with average Americans."

On Friday, Obama met with a group of steel workers in Munster, Ind. who recently had their work week scaled back from five days each week to four because of the struggling industry. Rather than give his stump speech, he focused on his plan for blue-collar workers, explaining how his opponent's proposal of a gas tax holiday would hurt steel workers.

"It would take money out of the federal Highway Trust Fund that we use to rebuild roads and bridges, which, by the way, is the thing we need to do if we want to keep people working here at Munster Steel," he said, drawing raucous applause.

As Obama was trying to build support in Munster, Clinton spoke at a college in Greensboro, N.C., a city of more than 240,000, of which about 40 percent is black.

Her campaign has drawn criticism from some black leaders who claim that her husband, former president Bill Clinton, tried to marginalize Obama as a black candidate. In February, the former president made headlines when he compared Obama's campaign in South Carolina to that of Jesse Jackson's, who also won the state by carrying its large black constituency but was ultimately unsuccessful in his 1984 presidential bid.

Since then, Clinton has routinely spent the final days of her statewide campaigns trying to woo voters in more urban areas, which Obama tends to win.

For instance, Clinton hadn't made any public campaign stops in Indianapolis before Saturday. Since then, she's spoken there four times. In North Carolina, which also votes tomorrow, she's made stops in Greenville, High Point and Raleigh - all cities with at least 75,000 people and black populations of about 30 percent.

Even in the Pennsylvania primary, which Clinton won, Obama managed to best his opponent in the state's biggest counties, taking between 60 and 65 percent of the vote in the most urban areas. What's more troubling for Clinton is that Obama won more than 90 percent of the black vote in Pennsylvania.

Still, Jones contends that the Clinton campaign has not had problems reaching out to black voters.

"I don't have any problems talking with African-American voters about Hillary Clinton," she said. "I get just as warm a reception from them as I get from others."