Presidential candidate Barack Obama will campaign Thursday afternoon in Chesapeake, wrapping up two days of intense campaigning in Virginia.

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Barack Obama

Obama will speak at Oscar Smith High School in what billed as a town hall format. The event is free and open to the public but tickets are required. They can be purchased at Obama campaign offices in five area cities on a first-come basis.

Doors at Oscar Smith High open at 4:30 p.m. but the campaign has not announced the starting time for the program.

The candidate will travel to Hampton Roads following a Thursday morning appearance in Chester, at which he will appear with Gov. Tim Kaine, a running mate finalist. That event will be held at John Tyler Community College, named for the last Virginian to serve as vice president.

Obama will be spending Wednesday in Southside Virginia, with stops in Martinsville and Lynchburg.

In Chesapeake, Obama will make jobs, taxes, renewable energy and college costs his topics, according to his campaign. On Wednesday, his message will be targeted at working families.

If Obama can persuade rural Southern voters to forsake Republicans in a presidential election, there's no better place than Southside Virginia and no better message than economic fairness, says David "Mudcat" Saunders.

Virginia is a Southern battleground state and home to one of his top potential running mates. On Wednesday, Obama begins his Virginia swing in Martinsville, a city whose industrial base has been exported abroad over the past decade.

"Martinsville is the perfect place for him to go populist," said Saunders, a Democratic consultant who helped former Gov. Mark R. Warner and Sen. Jim Webb win elections in a state that last backed a Democrat for president in 1964.

Economic fairness and a respect for Southern culture are essential issues for any Democrat who hopes to compete in areas where conservatives use school prayer, gun rights, gay marriage and other social issues successfully, Saunders and co-author Steve Jarding assert in "Foxes in the Hen House," their book prescribing how Democrats can compete for votes in rural America, especially the South.

Martinsville is on the western edge of a region of south-central Virginia dotted by small factory and farm towns whose culture is distinctively Dixie. Sundays are all about church, Saturdays are for hunting and fishing, Fridays in the fall are for high school football, and Wal-Mart is the big retailer seven days a week. Martinsville's crown jewel is the NASCAR speedway that holds two nationally televised races every year.

But Martinsville, Danville, South Boston and other small cities in the region have seen the textile, clothing and furniture mill jobs that were once economic mainstays move overseas at the same time tobacco farms and firms have suffered.

Obama should note that the wealthiest have become even richer during that time and attribute the disparity to Republican economic policies, Saunders counsels.

"He needs to talk about how the big guys have screwed the little guys and how we're going to screw them back, and Martinsville is the best place in the world to do that," said Saunders, who helped fashion an economic equity message aimed at rural voters for John Edwards' presidential bid.

U.S. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. and a McCain supporter, said Obama is trying to exploit misfortune and insecurities by heading into places reeling from job losses.

"It doesn't take a lot of courage to go into Martinsville and talk about trade," said Davis, who is not seeking re-election this fall to his district in Washington's suburbs. Martinsville's unemployment rate is among the state's highest.

"What would be courageous is for him to come to Fairfax County where you have 362 foreign-owned companies and tens of thousands of employees ... and talk about trade up here," Davis said.

The politics of resentment rarely succeeds unless a candidate can explain how he would bring in new employers, said Merle Black, a professor of political science at Emory University in Atlanta who specializes in politics in the South.

"That might provide some psychological satisfaction, but it doesn't provide more jobs to the people of Martinsville unless you can say, 'Here are programs that work and here is what we'll do here,"' Black said.

Obama's guide in Martinsville will be Warner, who became popular there by courting the region as a candidate for governor, then routing economic development projects to the area while in office from 2002 to 2006.

"It can't be just about pointing out what bad things have happened in the past. Those textile jobs aren't coming back," Warner said. "People want hope, but they also want specificity."

Obama's specifics Wednesday will revolve around initiatives that Warner and Obama have proposed to make clean energy profitable, said Kevin Griffis, a top Obama campaign operative in Virginia. The specifics include expanding biofuel refineries, replacing lost factory jobs with technology jobs and commercial applications of Virginia Tech's clean coal research.

It's also about showing up to talk to small-town voters who rarely glimpse presidential politics, said Warner.

"Neither party has paid any attention to small-town America for decades," said Warner, a heavy favorite in his U.S. Senate race this fall against his Republican predecessor as governor, Jim Gilmore.

Obama will make jobs the issue later Wednesday evening in Lynchburg, seat of the Falwell evangelical empire.

Meanwhile, a senior Obama adviser told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Tuesday that Obama and his veep choice will appear together in front of the former state Capitol in Illinois where Abraham Lincoln once served.

The last time Obama appeared there, early in 2007, he announced he was running for president.

The disclosure narrowed the window for Obama to reveal his running mate. The campaign says the announcement will come in a cell phone text message to supporters.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)