In key S.C. vote, Edwards seeking home field edge

About 200 people from this town, where he spent his youth, gathered to show support, as the clocked ticked toward today's primary vote. An exhausted Edwards arrived in the late-evening rain, to raucous cheers.

"It's a great honor for me to be back in my birthplace and in the place where tomorrow we're going to win the South Carolina primary," he said, campaigning with his wife and three children.

Polls show Senator John F. Kerry within striking distance of Edwards in South Carolina, a state that the North Carolina senator said he must win today to continue in the race. Kerry has also been polling strong in the other six states voting today.

Edwards was born here in 1954, in modest pink clapboard house in Seneca that is now used as a prop in his television ads. His father worked in a nearby cotton mill that has since closed, as have many others in this economically pressed region. Biography has been at the core of Edwards's campaign. His father earned a modest salary as a mill worker here and across the border in North Carolina, with Edwards the first in his family to attend college, going on to earn tens of millions as a trial lawyer. Edwards has repeatedly said his blue-collar southern roots make him the only Democratic candidate viable in the south, a region that Republicans have dominated for the last two decades.

"He's common. He's on even ground with us," said Lynne Finch, 55, of Seneca. "You have to live in the area to understand it. Around here, a lot of plants have folded. He understands that."

Still, when asked whom she plans to vote for, Finch said, "Probably Edwards. Or maybe Kerry. It seems like Kerry could beat Bush. I don't know."

Weeks of nonstop campaigning have taken a toll on Edwards: his voice cracked and strained yesterday, a symptom of the bronchitis the candidate was treating with antibiotics. Edwards spent most of the day holding small rallies, well attended by local television crews, at colleges, including two predominantly black schools. At both, he was joined on stage by sign-waving black students, a clear appeal to South Carolina's sizable black population, which is expected to make up about 40 percent of today's voters.

Raja Mishra can be reached at rmishra@globe.com.