PHILADELPHIA - The door to the downtown storefront office says "Welcome to All," but the layout of the Philadelphia Democratic City Committee's premises makes clear who belongs in the clubhouse of one of the country's last surviving big-city machines.
The backroom, where smoke still stains the walls, has just enough space for the 69 Democratic leaders of Philadelphia's wards and whoever at that moment is appealing for their fealty.
"It gets so crowded in there," said Maurice Floyd, a former city commissioner who was in attendance Friday as a former president and sitting congressman came to work the room on behalf of each of their presidential candidates.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama should prime themselves for more such intimacy. Between Mississippi's primary today and Pennsylvania's on April 22, the pair will spend six weeks tending to only one state with 158 delegates at stake - the same period of time they spent courting voters in 40 contests, awarding more than 2,500 delegates, that have weighed in since South Carolina's primary in late January whittled the field down to two.
As a coast-to-coast sprint gives way to a one-state slog, Clinton and Obama will revert from planes to buses, rallies to town hall meetings, and national messages to the localized efforts at persuasion last practiced in Iowa and New Hampshire.
"You get an opportunity to really work your ground troops and the grass-roots operations," said Floyd, who is not working for any candidate. "Especially in a state this size, with this amount of delegates, you get a chance to really perfect your message."
For Obama, who lost three of four primaries last week, the long period in Pennsylvania will offer an extended opportunity to address Clinton's newly invigorated critique of his experience and commitment to economic issues, expected to be a dominant concern here as they were in Ohio.
"This is the first time the light has been shined on him, and it's the first time people have been given pause," said Neil Oxman, a media consultant and longtime adviser to Governor Ed Rendell, the state's most powerful Democrat.
"The fact that Obama has seven weeks to recover from Texas and Ohio benefits him," Oxman said. "You're not going to find something that works to turn it around in a week. You might find it in seven weeks."
The two well-funded campaigns will have no problem financing the $1 million per week it costs to advertise across the state's six media markets. Unlike the last time Democrats campaigned continuously for a long period in small spaces - and above all in a state where residents pride themselves on being "Iowa Nice" - the rougher local political culture in Pennsylvania will not restrain the candidates' increasingly confrontational postures, according to local consultants.
"There's not as big a cost for going negative in Pennsylvania," said Rebecca Kirszner, a strategist who has worked on campaigns in the state. "Voters there have been known to embrace candidates who are willing to throw an elbow now and then."
Pennsylvania is an accidental host to such a pivotal vote. Although a regular general-election swing state, a late-spring primary date has long made Pennsylvania a laggard on the Democratic nominating calendar. Pennsylvanians have not played a decisive role in picking a standard-bearer since 1976 and have not participated in an active contest since 1984. State officials settled on April 22 only after Rendell failed in an effort to move to an earlier date - to increase the influence of voters.
"Everyone was expecting the Barack coronation, but the events of Tuesday night threw it into a lurch," said Frank Keel, a political consultant who works closely with Pennsylvania unions.
Clinton has deep support within the state's entrenched Democratic Party infrastructure, and last month earned the support of the party committee in Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, by a 2-to-1 margin.
But many Democrats who are still uncommitted appear ready to bask in their newfound national influence. Philadelphia's prominent construction unions, which have drifted toward Obama in recent weeks - and were ready to endorse him following his Wisconsin victory - decided after his losses last week to postpone their decision indefinitely.
"If we had pushed, we would have gotten an Obama endorsement. I didn't want to push," said Pat Gillespie, president of the Philadelphia Building Trades Council, who has been called twice by Obama. "We don't know how to act. This is the first presidential campaign we've had in 32 years."
On Friday, despite the visit from former president Bill Clinton, the Democratic City Committee - split in large part along racial lines - also decided not to endorse a candidate, and instead opted to permit its ward leaders to follow their own interests.
When Vice President Walter Mondale came before the 1980 primary to rally support from the same group on behalf of Jimmy Carter, he was interrupted mid-speech by a ward leader questioning how much street money he could expect to turn out the vote for Carter. The shadowy payments made to officials and operatives before election day have since graduated from cash to check, but remain a widely accepted practice in the state's largest city.
"They thought Pennsylvania was going to be a snore, but now they're very excited. It's going to be a payday for a lot of these people," said Eleanor Dezzi, a Democratic consultant who expects to be named a Clinton delegate.
Strategists and candidates say that ward leaders and committee members have little ability to influence voters' preferences in presidential contests, but can be helpful in aiding campaigns as they work to quickly establish a network of volunteers, consultants, and staff on unfamiliar turf. Elsewhere, enthusiasm for Obama among activists has given him an early organizational edge.
Supporters of both candidates acknowledge that the electorate - in a primary that is open only to Democratic voters, not independents - is favorable to Clinton because it is heavy on the voter blocs that have sustained her elsewhere: women, working-class whites, and older voters. When 150 volunteers turned out for a recent Clinton organizing meeting in the inner-ring suburbs of Delaware County, outside Philadelphia, only two or three were under the age of 55, according to a Clinton organizer.
"I think Pennsylvania is set up for her - it's her kind of election," Dezzi said.
Yet in the state's last contested high-profile Democratic primary, Rendell, a former Philadelphia mayor, won by producing large margins in the city and its surrounding counties based on a coalition of blacks, white liberals, and moderate suburbanites.
Aided by some of Rendell's top field strategists, the Obama campaign is attempting largely to reassemble the Rendell coalition. At the same time, given their candidate's proven appeal among young voters and blacks, they see new opportunities to mobilize voters in the state's college towns and in its smaller urban areas.
Unlike in many previous primary states, where the registration period closed long before campaigns went to work, the long window in Pennsylvania gives both campaigns another two weeks to focus on adding new supporters to the rolls.
There is evidence that Obama's efforts to reshape the electorate before the primary are working. In Montgomery County, Democrats claimed a net gain of 7,700 new registrants since October. "They have to do everything they can to change the math - to make this primary younger, more African-American, more college educated," Oxman said of Obama's campaign.
