Riding high on Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Senator Obama, the presidential candidate’s wife is sweeping through New York today to attend a private fund-raiser at an Upper East Side apartment before heading to Greenwich, Conn., for another fund-raising stop.

Michelle Obama’s visit, less than a week before New York and 21 other states hold primaries on Super Tuesday, coincides with her husband’s release in New York City of a television advertisement that evokes the legacy of President Kennedy. The ad features the sole surviving child of Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy, a New Yorker, saying that Mr. Obama can “lift America and make us one nation again.”

Although New York has long been written off as Senator Clinton’s political territory, polls show the Obama campaign making competitive inroads in the city, opening up the possibility that he might score a symbolic win in New York City on Tuesday.

Mrs. Obama’s solo visit is likely to generate excitement among his supporters. She is a popular draw on the campaign trail, and the fund-raisers she is headlining are both sold out.

She is flying into New York today from Chicago for a fund-raiser at the East 66th Street home of Patricia and Peter Findlay. Mrs. Findlay is a marketing consultant and Mr. Findlay is an art dealer. The 100-odd guests are paying $2,300 or $1,000 to attend, and Mrs. Findlay said she could have sold out the event several times over.

“It’s really happening,” she said, referring to the momentum she says is building for the campaign. “Bush, Clinton, they are old names. They are of the past.”

After the Upper East Side luncheon, where donors will dine on finger sandwiches, pasta salad, poached salmon, and seared beef, Mrs. Obama is stopping by the Parkway Diner in Stamford, Conn., to talk with a small group of women who work for a living about whatever is on their minds, a campaign aide said.

This evening, she will attend a sold-out fundraiser at a private home hosted by Ned Lamont, the cable television executive who ran for the Senate against Senator Lieberman in 2006, and Gayle King, the editor at large of O, the Oprah Magazine. Mr. Lamont said the crowd would comprise donors from all political persuasions.

“Michelle Obama is quite a draw because people are attracted to Barack Obama, the person. Who is this man and why does he seem to attract folks of all political stripes?” he said. “That’s why he is such a compelling candidate. That’s why he is sort of transcendent.”

Mrs. Obama was born in 1964 on Chicago’s South Side, and graduated from Princeton University in 1985 and Harvard Law School in 1988. She met Mr. Obama when he was a summer associate at a Chicago law firm, Sidley and Austin, where she was working at the time.

She later founded a leadership-training program for young adults in Chicago, Public Allies, and became the University of Chicago’s associate dean of student services. She went on to become the university’s executive director of community and external affairs, and in 2005 took at job at the University of Chicago Medical Center as its vice president of community and external affairs.

The Obamas have two daughters, Malia, 9, and Sasha, 6.

In preparation for the Tuesday primaries, Mrs. Clinton yesterday launched a new 30-second Spanish-language television advertisement in New York, California, Arizona, and Connecticut that presents her as the candidate who best understands and respects Latino voters. The campaign hired a Spanish-language television announcer to do the voice-over.

The Obama advertisement narrated by Ms. Kennedy will run in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and on national cable channels, in addition to New York City.

Mrs. Obama last visited New York City in June, when she spoke at the New York Historical Society on the Upper West Side and then addressed a crowd at the Our Children’s Foundation in Harlem, a few blocks from President Clinton’s office in the neighborhood.