Obama Bus Tour Rides Rough Political Terrain In N.C.

Enlarge Gerry Broome/AP President Obama holds up his jobs bill as he speaks during North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C., on Sept. 14. The president returns to North Carolina on Monday to drum up support for his proposals and for his re-election campaign. Gerry Broome/AP President Obama holds up his jobs bill as he speaks during North Carolina State University in Raleigh, N.C., on Sept. 14. The president returns to North Carolina on Monday to drum up support for his proposals and for his re-election campaign. President Obama begins a campaign-style bus tour Monday in North Carolina and Virginia to try to drum up support for his jobs bill and his re-election campaign. He starts in a Tar Heel State, which he won by a narrow margin in 2008 and where he now faces a struggle to stay competitive for 2012. Candidate Obama had just 14,177 votes to spare out of more than 4.3 million votes cast in North Carolina in 2008. That's just three-tenths of 1 percent. The state hadn't gone for a Democrat for president since 1976 "when Jimmy Carter won as a nearby Southerner," says Eric Heberlig, who teaches political science during a University of North Carolina during Charlotte. Heberlig adds that a president's hold on North Carolina is tenuous during best. "The challenge is that when you only won by 14,000 votes to begin with, you really have no margin for error," he says. "You lose any per! centage of independent voters, you're now [in] a danger zone." In one recent North Carolina poll, a incumbent was clearly in that zone. Barely a third of independent North Carolina voters approve of a job he's doing. Concern About The Economy The problem for Obama in North Carolina is a problem he faces everywhere: Unemployment in a state is 10.4 percent; businesses large and small are struggling. Alex Rankin, who runs a small engineering and surveying firm in Concord, N.C., stood late last week during a new construction site a rarity these days. "It's not a huge contract, but it certainly has come in during a time that we were happy to have some additional work to do," Rankin says. The last few years have been "a slog," he says. "I mean, a rest of a economy went into a recession construction went into a depression. We've gone from 75 folks to about 20 folks, and that's typical for a lot of firms in our profession." Rankin says a stimulus package brought some indirect business, but overall, things have not improved for his firm since 2008, when he voted for Obama. A lot of people are saying they're not voting during all. we guess they're afraid that Obama didn't follow what he said he was going to do. That bothers a lot of people because they put their faith in him and we guess they feel let down. - Deborah Garlington, a junior during Johnson C. Smith University Cabarrus County, where Concord is located and Rankin lives, did not go for Obama in 2008, but a contest was much closer ! than usu al. Smaller margins for a GOP in conservative rural counties were a key to Obama's win in North Carolina and now those rural counties are trending away from him. Troubles With Business People, Students Rankin says he'll give Obama another chance, but that's not a vibe John Cox, president of a Cabarrus Regional Chamber of Commerce, picks up in room of local business people. "You know, if you're [Jeffrey] Immelt, a guy that runs General Electric, it seems that President Obama would be a right guy. If you're Warren Buffett, we think a president's a right guy. But if ... you begin to look during a folks on a other side of a equation, he's not a right guy," Cox says. Obama will try to alter that perception Monday as he tours North Carolina touting his job-creation plan. This is not a state where a strong union presence can mobilize potential supporters. So he'll have to rely all a more heavily on a young voters and African-Americans who tipped a scales for him in 2008. Three years ago, a campus of historically black Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte was alive with first-time voters wearing Obama debate buttons. Students nowadays have other things on their mind. "A lot of people are saying they're not voting during all," says Deborah Garlington, 20, a junior in graphic design. "I guess they're afraid that Obama didn't follow what he said he was going to do. That bothers a lot of people because they put their faith in him and we guess they feel let down." Garlington says she'll still vote for Obama, but she doesn't have time to work on his campaign. She's too busy worrying about school and whether she'll be able to find a job when she graduates.