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RALEIGH - Sen. Barack Obama held a town hall-style meeting Tuesday in the state he hopes will support a Democratic president for the first time in 32 years.

The presumptive Democratic nominee fielded questions about his unnamed vice presidential selection, jobs, homelessness and other topics from the 2,500-person crowd .

And after the meeting, Obama sat with the News & Record for a short one-on-one interview :

No Democratic presidential candidate has won either of the Carolinas in 32 years. What do you plan to do to turn that, particularly in North Carolina?

"People are hurting right now," Obama said, referring to the state's manufacturing job losses since the 1990s and referencing concerns about health care.

"If people are better off now than they were when George Bush took office, then they should vote for (Republican Sen.) John McCain ... because the Republicans and John McCain are offering the exact same economic policies as George Bush in the last eight years."

How do you plan to overcome the racial divide between supporters for yourself and McCain?

"If you look at my candidacy, I would not be here if I was just getting African American support," he said, "I won the nomination against some of the best elected officials in the country."

Obama added that his nomination required broad support in many areas of the country, including North Carolina, where he won the Democratic primary earlier this year.

"There may be more work that I have to do to win over white voters who are less familiar with my record, and as long as I'm communicating to them that I'm going to be fighting for their jobs, for their health care, for their pensions, for their child being able to go to college, then I think we'll get a good share of the vote," he said.

Voters under age 30 are more supportive of your campaign, but older voters tend to gravitate toward McCain. What do you plan to do to bridge that gap?

"We can't afford the same old Washington experience, if we're really going to do something about cleaning up the special interests in Washington and making sure that we're addressing energy independence and health care reform," Obama said.

He said that his campaign needs to make sure that older voters are getting as informed about his track record as younger voters, who may seek out Obama through places such as the Internet. He added that, in his tax proposal, he plans to eliminate income taxes on Social Security payments for people over 55 years old.

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Earlier Tuesday night at the town hall meeting, Gloria Craven's hard-luck story - being laid off with health problems and a husband too old to work - set the theme.

Craven, who was laid off from a Pillowtex mill in 2003, repeated the Obama refrain, "change," while introducing the presumptive Democratic nominee Tuesday at the N.C. State Fairgrounds.

Obama likened North Carolina's economic pain to other states that have seen manufacturing layoffs similar to North Carolina's troubles since the decline of tobacco and textiles began in the 1990s.

"People realize that times are tough and getting tougher," he said. Those "tough times" were reflected in the questions asked by the 2,500-person crowd.

Running mate's role

Obama addressed this by saying what he wouldn't do, referring to President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

"I won't hand over my energy policy to my vice president," Obama said. "I won't hand my vice president my foreign policy."

But he didn't allude to his vice presidential pick, which could occur by the end of the week. Obama did say that his vice presidential choice would be a "key adviser."

How to help veterans

A man who identified himself as a veteran asked what Obama would do about the high number of veterans among the nation's homeless.

"Veterans are seven times more likely to be homeless than non veterans," Obama said, calling for screenings for post-traumatic stress disorder and the aftereffects of brain injury upon a soldier's discharge from the armed forces.

"The unemployment rate for veterans between the ages of 18 to 25 is higher than non-veterans, and we're not helping them transition into the civilian economy," he said.

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com