Clintons look to West Virginia for big win

By TOM BREEN, Associated Press Writer Fri May 9, 10:51 AM ET

ATHENS, W.Va. - Hillary Rodham Clinton is counting on a victory in West Virginia, and it's her husband's job to run up the score.

Former President Clinton traveled much of the state Thursday and Friday, hoping to inspire voters in out-of-the-way places like Sutton and Fayetteville to turn out in large enough numbers to silence some of the national speculation that his wife's bid for the Democratic nomination is essentially finished.

"The surveys show she's ahead, but we want a big vote," he told a huge crowd at Concord University that waited more than 90 minutes to see him Thursday night. "Don't you believe all those commentators telling you this race is over."

The Clinton campaign is hoping that West Virginia — a state rich in the white, older, working class voters who have doggedly supported her — will provide a lift after the damaging results of Tuesday's primaries, in which she lost North Carolina and won Indiana by too small a margin to derail rival Barack Obama's bid for the nomination.

Speaking in gymnasiums and fairgrounds in rural towns, Bill Clinton returned repeatedly to the words "people like you and places like this" as the keys that could help his wife stop Obama's momentum.

"They want you to vote in low numbers so she doesn't get ahead in the popular vote," he told a crowd Thursday in Sutton.

Going from early morning to nearly midnight, from Barbour County in the north to the Virginia border in the south, Clinton clearly relished the chance to be on the stump again for an underdog campaign hoping for a miracle.

But there were signs of weariness. He snapped at a heckler in Fayetteville who shouted that neither he nor Hillary had done anything to work toward universal health coverage during his presidency.

"You're wrong. I can't believe you're saying this," he said, in a rejoinder that brought the biggest cheers of the stop. "For you or any other person to claim she didn't work hard is the craziest thing I ever heard."

West Virginia votes on Tuesday. The Clinton campaign is hoping for a big win here and in neighboring Appalachian state Kentucky on May 20 to give the New York senator some needed breathing room. Although Clinton campaigned here on behalf of his wife as recently as last week, on Thursday volunteers were circulating volunteer sign-up sheets for get-out-the-vote drives, underlining how crucial the campaign sees a large win here.