MCCAIN REPUDIATES N.C. GOP OVER AD INVOKING REV. WRIGHT

With a rebuke of state party officials for using Senator Obama’s former pastor in a television ad, the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign are beginning to define what will be fair game in a general election matchup with the Illinois senator. The issue came up after the North Carolina Republican Party unveiled an ad yesterday morning that shows clips of the former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and says Mr. Obama is “too extreme” for voters in the state. The ad is aimed at undercutting two Democratic gubernatorial candidates by tying them to Mr. Obama and Rev. Wright. The McCain campaign released a letter from the Arizona senator to the chairwoman of the state Republican Party, Linda Daves, in which he urges her not to run what he calls an “offensive” ad. “The television advertisement you are planning to air degrades our civics and distracts us from the very real differences we have with the Democrats,” he writes. “In the strongest terms, I implore you to not run this advertisement.” A Republican official involved in party strategy told The New York Sun yesterday that the party does not expect to use Rev. Wright in ads against Mr. Obama this fall if he wins the Democratic nomination. Despite Mr. McCain’s protestation, the North Carolina party said the ad would air anyway, beginning Monday.

CLINTON CAMPAIGN SAID ON TRACK FOR $10 MILLION IN A DAY

Senator Clinton’s victory in Pennsylvania on Tuesday appears to have spurred the flood of donations she needs to wage a competitive campaign in Indiana and North Carolina. Her campaign said yesterday that she was on track to raise $10 million through the Internet in the 24 hours after her win, which would be her best single fund-raising day of the race. The infusion will also help the campaign pay off more than $10 million it owed in debt to vendors and consultants. Both campaigns spent yesterday trying to spin the results in Pennsylvania, with Clinton surrogates arguing that the “tide is turning” in her favor while aides to Mr. Obama posited that because of his pledged delegate lead, the lack of a blowout meant that the race remained “fundamentally unchanged.”

OBAMA AIDE: WHITE WORKING-CLASS VOTERS NOT KEY FOR DEMOCRATS

A top adviser to Senator Obama, David Axelrod, is under fire over comments he made yesterday seeming to downplay the importance of Mr. Obama’s weak performance among lower-income white voters. “The white working class has gone to the Republican nominee for many elections, going back even to the Clinton years. This is not new that Democratic candidates don’t rely solely on those votes,” Mr. Axelrod told National Public Radio. President Clinton seized on the comments while speaking to a small-town crowd yesterday in Hillsborough, N.C. “Her opponent’s campaign strategist said, ‘Well, we don’t really need these working class people to win, half the time they vote for Republicans anyways.’ And I will tell you something, America needs you to win and therefore Hillary wants your support and I hope you will help her in this primary in North Carolina,” Mr. Clinton said, according to ABC News. As he spoke on a baseball diamond, the former president credited his wife’s win in Pennsylvania to “people like you and places like this.”

MCCAIN AIDE PENS MEMO TOUTING CLINTON’S APPEAL

Senator McCain’s campaign manager, Richard Davis, issued an 1,100-word memo about the strengths Senator Clinton showed in the Pennsylvania primary. “Clinton voters don’t automatically become Obama voters after he becomes the nominee. In fact, Obama leaves large portions of Clinton’s coalition on the table in November,” he wrote.

RICHARDSON: ‘WE’RE NOT MONACO’

Governor Richardson, who has endorsed Senator Obama, said last night Senator Clinton is “clinging to the throne” by pressing her presidential campaign.

“We’re America. We’re not Monaco,” he said on CNN. “I don’t know how to address that kind of idiocy,” an adviser to Mrs. Clinton, James Carville, replied. “People are voting.”

“I think the ending is fairly clear,” Mr. Richardson declared.