MYRTLE BEACH — Carol Moseley Braun on Saturday became the fifth presidential candidate to visit the Grand Strand.

Unlike other candidates, she didn’t come to talk about job losses at Georgetown Steel. She came to talk about education, choosing Myrtle Beach because the S.C. Alliance of Black School Educators is having its winter meeting here this weekend at Kingston Plantation.

“Education has always been a priority for me,” she said in between sessions at the conference. “It’s such an important issue.”

It was Moseley Braun’s second stop in South Carolina in the past month. The former ambassador and U.S. senator from Illinois spoke at a Pee Dee church in late December.

Her Saturday stop, which included a drop-in at Sandy Grove Missionary Baptist Church, is her only other scheduled South Carolina appearance.

Moseley Braun’s campaign platform focuses on creating jobs that pay well, establishing universal health-care coverage and improving educational opportunities. She also has advocated stronger civil liberty protections and opposed the war in Iraq.

Her chances for winning the Democratic nomination appear slim.

A December Pew Research Center poll showed U.S. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, a South Carolina native, leading all candidates for the Feb. 3 S.C. primary with 16 percent of voters supporting him. Retired Gen. Wesley Clark was second with 11 percent. Moseley Braun was toward the bottom of the nine-person field with 2 percent support. About one-third of voters polled said they were still undecided.

But Moseley Braun said Saturday she thinks she has a chance. “I’m in it to win it,” she said. “I think it’s wide open.”

She said South Carolina’s problem with education is the same as that of many other states: Federal education spending is being shoved onto the states, and they can’t keep up.

“It’s just not right,” she said.

She added the federal No Child Left Behind Act is a “huge unfunded mandate” that states will have to pay for.

Although Moseley Braun wasn’t here to focus on job losses, she is a critic of trade agreements that Democrats say have led to widespread joblessness.

“We have to do trade the right way, in a way that creates jobs and doesn’t give competitors an advantage,” she said.

The S.C. primary is considered a political bellwether for the South by candidates and political observers.

“It’ll give South Carolina a lot of exposure,” said Brian Scott of North Myrtle Beach, who came to Saturday’s conference with his wife, Roberta, and their son, Avery, 16, specifically to meet Moseley Braun.