Candidates still working to sway undecided South Carolina voters

COLUMBIA, S.C. - State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter plans to decide which Democratic presidential candidate to support when she walks into the voting booth Tuesday.

Cobb-Hunter said the crowded field of seven hopefuls left her analyzing the candidates down to the last minute. "I have decided that to hell with electabilty, I'm voting for somebody I like. I just don't know who that will be," she said Monday.

While polls of likely South Carolina voters show a tight race between John Edwards and John Kerry, there's a huge chunk of voters - between 12 percent and 23 percent, depending on the poll - who could swing the race in almost anyone's favor.

The state's first-in-the-South Democratic presidential primary is being closely watched, and with so many voters yet to make up this minds, it's tough to gauge who might emerge on top Tuesday night.

Dan Dearybury summed up his indecision with a sign: "Kerry or Edwards or Dean or Bubba, just anybody but Bush." The 45-year-old Cowpens resident held the sign outside a candidates' debate Thursday in Greenville.

On Monday, he said he was leaning toward Kerry because U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., had endorsed the Massachusetts senator.

"There's just not a lot of good information to make your decision," Dearybury said.

Danielle Vinson, a political scientist at Furman University, said voters were wrestling with their decisions because they're not familiar enough with the candidates.

"They've all done a wonderful job of distinguishing themselves from George Bush, but they haven't really spelled out a lot of the differences among themselves," she said. "That makes it tougher for voters."

Vinson said the candidates have not taken advantage of opportunities to make themselves stand out from the pack. "I think they're just scared of being labeled as negative. They haven't realized or figured out that you can compare yourself to someone else and their position without being nasty about it," she said.

The attacks Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt lobbed at each other leading up to the Iowa caucuses proved to be fatal for Gephardt, who dropped out of the race after a fourth-place finish. Dean tumbled from front-runner status to take third in Iowa and second in New Hampshire. Kerry won both states.

Most candidates have been camped out for the past year in Iowa and New Hampshire but have sprinted through the seven states holding contests on Tuesday, said former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, who supports Wesley Clark.

Hodges said the allegiance voters have for a candidate is not overwhelming either.

"Electability is like beauty - it's in the eye of the beholder," Hodges said Monday. "Regardless of the outcome of the primary tomorrow, the depth of commitment to any one candidate is not all that deep."

Kerry, Edwards and Clark have pumped thousands of dollars into television ads in South Carolina during the past week to catch voters' attention.

All the candidates have had hundreds of volunteers, many from other states, descend on South Carolina neighborhoods, knocking on doors or placing phone calls to help undecided voters make up their minds before polls open at 7 a.m. Tuesday.

Al Sharpton and Edwards, who has staked his campaign on his native state, crisscrossed the state to court voters personally in the days before the primary.

"John Edwards is here in South Carolina. He cares enough to be here," his campaign spokeswoman Jenni Engebretsen said Monday. "He's talking to voters in these last final days just as he has over the past year plus."

Claude R. Bibb, 70, of Georgetown said Monday evening he had settled on Edwards - unless something changed his mind in final few hours. "People are still listening to what will be the best candidate," he said.

U.S. Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., who endorsed Gephardt before he quit the race, said he voted absentee on Monday.

"I narrowed it down to John Edwards and General Clark - and I finally voted for John Kerry," Spratt said.

Vinson said people like to vote for winners.

"If there is this perception that Kerry is a winner and they think he's a viable candidate against Bush in the fall, they may happily jump on the bandwagon," she said.