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Obama tries to escape Wright effect

BY GLENN THRUSH | glenn.thrush@newsday.com

9:20 PM EDT, May 1, 2008

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama gobbled up a major Hillary Clinton superdelegate Thursday -- but he's suffering from a decline in the polls that coincides with the national tour conducted by his firebrand former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Joe Andrew -- who endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton last year -- defected to Obama Thursday, the 15th superdelegate to back him in the last week.

"We have two good candidates, but we have two people who've run their campaigns in two different ways," said Andrew, an Indiana superdelegate. "Barack Obama is serious about changing the process in politics. ... I'm inspired by someone who says, you know we don't have to play the game."

At the same time, a bevy of new polls seemed to show Obama is suffering from the "Wright Effect."

Clinton has widened her lead in Indiana, cut Obama's edge in North Carolina down to 7 points and lurched ahead in a major national poll, following a week of wall-to-wall coverage of controversial remarks by Obama's ex-pastor.

A Gallup national daily tracking poll showed Clinton jumping to a 49 to 45 lead over Obama, her biggest lead nationally since mid-March. Obama led Clinton by 10 points in the poll on the eve of the April 22 Pennsylvania primary.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Thursday showed Obama and Clinton in a statistical dead heat nationally, with Obama surrendering a 7-point lead in the last six weeks.

Tom Bevan, founder of Realclearpolitics.com, which tracks poll data, termed the shift a "rather dramatic tightening" of a Democratic presidential race many had considered finished prior to Clinton's Pennsylvania victory, Wright's resurfacing and Obama's belated denunciation of the pastor.

At the same time, Quinnipiac University polls in the swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida showed Clinton faring better than Obama against presumptive GOP nominee John McCain. In Ohio -- a pivotal battleground in 2000 and 2004 -- Clinton breezes past McCain by 10 points, while Obama is locked in a virtual dead heat.

If that wasn't bad enough, Indianapolis-based TeleResearch Corp. released a robo-call telephone survey of Indiana Democrats, showing Clinton with a 10-point lead over Obama, 48 to 38 percent, with 14 percent undecided ahead of Tuesday's make-or-break primary.

Obama's lead in North Carolina, which had hovered in the 15-point range for the past month, has been reduced to 7 points, according to polls released by Research 2000 and Mason Dixon in the last several days.

"Rev. Wright is a factor, but I think there's many more things going on here," Clinton pollster Geoff Garin told Newsday. "Sen. Obama is someone who came to the forefront in an ascendant position in the race with people not really knowing all that much about him. The Jeremiah Wright situation has not been helpful. It comes on the heels of the controversy of his comments about people in small towns being bitter, and on top of his failure to close out the race in Pennsylvania. ... The question marks are beginning to feed on themselves."

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said the polls were less important than the steady flow of superdelegates into the Obama camp. Clinton's lead in superdelegates has dwindled from around 85 in February to 17 now.

"Polls have gone up and down this entire campaign but what we've seen is that voters are committed to changing Washington and taking on the challenges we face, instead of the distractions on the campaign trail, and our grassroots support continues to grow," Burton said.