Former POW with McCain, Biden's wife plan visits to Cape Girardeau this week

Southeast Missouri voters will get a chance this week to visit with a man who was prisoner of war alongside John McCain and also hear from Jill Biden, wife of Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden.

The visits come as polls show the Missouri vote in the upcoming presidential race is getting tighter and visits to the state by major politicians hoping to shore up the vote for their party become more frequent.

Retired U.S. Navy Capt. Charlie Plumb will make a stop at 11:15 a.m. Friday at the Team Emerson offices, 400 Broadway in Cape Girardeau. The visit is part of a statewide tour that will also include stops in St. Louis, Springfield and Kansas City.

Plumb spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison with McCain. He was shot down a few months after McCain in 1967.

"His first mission with John McCain was to survive years of captivity as prisoners of war," the McCain campaign said in a news release. "His current mission is to make sure Missouri voters know how John McCain continues to fight and put 'country first.'"

Jill Biden is the wife of Joe Biden, a U.S. senator from Delaware who is the running mate of Democratic nominee Barack Obama. The news release announcing the visit said Biden's effort would take her "across the state to talk with voters about what's at stake for families who are struggling to make ends meet during increasingly challenging economic times."

Biden's visit will be Saturday in Cape Girardeau. Justin Hamilton, a spokesman for the Obama-Biden campaign, said late Wednesday that details and logistics for the Biden stop in Cape Girardeau were still being worked out.

The latest polling in Missouri was released Wednesday. Conducted for CNN/Time by Opinion Research Corp., the poll shows Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama is in a dead heat in Missouri with McCain. Among likely voters, Obama received 48 percent of the vote to McCain's 49 percent. Among registered voters, Obama leads 50 percent to 47 percent. The poll was conducted Oct. 11 to 14 and has a margin of error of 3 percent for likely voters and 3.5 percent for registered voters.

rkeller@semissourian.com

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