Calls slam Obama in coal country

WALLINGFORD, Pa.

The two presidential candidates stomped into the other party’s territory Sunday, with Sen. Barack Obama making a run for “red” Ohio, while Sen. John McCain battled to put “blue” Pennsylvania in his column with the aid of automated calls using Mr. Obama’s own words to accuse him of planning to bankrupt the coal industry.

The Republican National Committee, meanwhile, targeted voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio and other coal-producing states with “robocalls” saying that “coal jobs, which are so important to our community, are in jeopardy. … Listen to Barack Obama’s plans to bankrupt the coal industry.”

The call then plays an excerpt from a January interview that Mr. Obama gave the San Francisco Chronicle in which he defends his proposal for a cap-and-trade system to limit emissions of carbon dioxide by requiring power plants and others to buy the right to emit the harmful gas.

Listen to Obama’s plans for the coal states.

“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” he said.

The Obama campaign denounced the RNC calls as taking his quote “wildly” out of context, saying that elsewhere in the interview, Mr. Obama calls the idea of banning coal burning “an illusion.”

“The point Obama is making is that we need to transition from coal-burning power plants built with old technology to plants built with advanced technologies - and that is exactly the action that will be incentivized under a cap-and-trade program,” an Obama spokesman told ABC News.

In a town-hall meeting Sunday night in New Hampshire, where environmentalism is a strong force, Mr. McCain was asked whether he would oppose coal-burning plants that don’t have carbon-sequestration technology.

“I want to tell you that I would, but I can’t,” he said, noting that the technology is still in its infancy and raises the cost of power. He also noted that current coal-burning plants, which are mostly old but provide half of the nation’s electricity, would need to be handled differently under any climate-control rules.

The candidates and their surrogates continued their dash to the finish line Sunday, crisscrossing Ohio and Pennsylvania, both pivotal states where coal is a major industry.

In Wallingford, Pa., Sen. Joe Lieberman, Connecticut independent and a longtime McCain friend, told a packed rally that the state will be pivotal. If Mr. McCain neither flips Pennsylvania nor successfully defends Ohio, he has virtually no chance of piecing together the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the presidency on Tuesday.

“Twenty-one electoral votes - that can make up for a lot of votes,” Mr. Lieberman said. “You can really turn this around.”

Mr. Obama’s path to the presidency, on the other hand, is far more open. Polls show the six closest states are Florida, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Nevada and Ohio, all states won by President Bush in 2004. His aggressive ground game has virtually guaranteed a win in Iowa, where he leads by a large margin in the latest polls, as well as given him a good chance at winning New Mexico, New Hampshire, Colorado and Virginia.

But the Democrat warned against overconfidence at a rally in Columbus, Ohio.

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