Warner joins Obama in Southwest

MARTINSVILLE — Sen. Barack Obama, campaigning with former Gov. Mark R. Warner, came to Virginia’s most economically beleaguered city yesterday to say he will work to keep jobs from moving overseas.
Disappointing some who hoped he would announce his vice-presidential running mate, the Illinois Democrat pushed his economic agenda as good medicine for anemic communities stricken by plant closings.
In Martinsville and Wednesday night in Lynchburg, where he campaigned with Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., Obama courted rural voters, hoping to expand a coalition that he hopes will help him carry Virginia’s 13 electoral votes.
Today, with running mate speculation at a fever pitch, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine will join Obama in Chester at John Tyler Community College. From there, Obama proceeds to Chesapeake, the final stop on his two-day swing-state swing.
While Obama campaigned in Martinsville and Lynchburg yesterday, Kaine deflected questions about his vice presidential prospects while taking his Cabinet on a tour of Peninsula projects with state involvement.
In Martinsville, Obama continued to portray his Republican rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain, as another version of President Bush.
“We’ve got to recognize we can’t do things the way we’ve been doing them over the last eight years,” Obama told a hand-picked crowd of 300 people at Patrick Henry Community College.
Obama said the country needs to invest more money in roads, rail and broadband to help communities like Martinsville and surrounding Henry County. The spigot of corporate tax breaks, he said, also needs to be shut off to companies that abandon the United States for cheaper labor abroad.
Martinsville has the state’s highest unemployment rate, 11.4 percent in June. Virginia’s unemployment rate is 4.2 percent, according to the state’s latest figures.
Some of those who attended the meeting had lost jobs in plant closings, and Obama was introduced by a local man who said he was recently laid off from his job at a box-making plant that moved to another country.
“I’m not saying that every job is going to come back to Martinsville just because I’m elected president,” Obama said. “I’m not saying that suddenly all of the schools are going to be fixed. But what I can do is I can say that I’m going to wake up every day thinking about you and thinking about how to make your life a little better.”
Sabena Carter, an information services teacher at the community college who came to hear Obama, said it’s good for Obama to see a suffering community close up - it will keep him focused on helping average Americans. “Being here, talking to these folks who lost their jobs, it’s a big help,” she said.
Last night in Lynchburg, hometown of the late evangelical conservative preacher Jerry Falwell, a crowd of about 2,000 people crammed into the tiny E.C. Glass high school gymnasium to welcome Obama.
At his introduction the crowd stood, cheered and chanted his name for more than a minute.
“It’s good to be in Virginia,” said Obama, who stood on a platform situated in the middle of the gym floor.
Obama said that watching manufacturing plants move out of southern Virginia is worrisome. “But understand it’s happening everywhere, in southern Ohio, in southern Illinois.”
With Obama in Virginia, Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, a Republican, and McCain policy adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin told reporters in a conference call that Obama’s proposals rely on higher taxes and additional government spending.
“More taxes and government spending are a formula for disaster,” Bolling said.
During his trip to the Peninsula, Kaine was met at every event by members of the media less interested in the stop than in his stock as a potential vice presidential running mate.
“I tell you, it’s been a little surreal,” Kaine said during an evening reception at Berkeley Plantation in Charles City County, where his Cabinet recessed after a long day on the road.
As of last evening Kaine said he still did not know whether he would be the chosen one.
“I absolutely do not [know],” he said. “I absolutely do not. They’re doing a good job of heightening the excitement for all concerned.”
Rex Bowman and Carlos Santos are staff writers for the Richmond Times-Dispatch
Times-Dispatch staff writers Bill Geroux, Jim Nolan and Jeff E. Schapiro contributed to this report.