Presidential Candidate Barack Obama to visit Claflin U.

Sen. Barack Obama's campaign for President will be visiting Claflin University Saturday at 11 a.m. Obama is scheduled to speak at Claflin University's Tullis Arena in the Jonas T. Kennedy Health and Physical Education Center. The event is free and open to the public.

Claflin University President Dr. Henry Tisdale called Obama's visit "a significant and wonderful opportunity for our students to observe, first-hand, the political process unfolding on a national level."

"We are honored that Sen. Obama chose us as the location for the citizens of this area to hear his political platform as presidential candidates explain their political agenda to the voters of South Carolina and as we head toward these early and very important primaries," Tisdale said.

Obama's traveling press secretary, Dan Pfeiffer, said "We are seeing a lot of interest in Sen. Obama's events in South Carolina."

"This is his first visit to South Carolina as a presidential candidate, and he is excited to talk with the people of South Carolina about how we can change our politics and meet the challenges facing the country," he said.

It will be Obama's second visit to Orangeburg. He also spoke at Claflin in October 2004 when he was running for the U.S. Senate.

Political observers expect Orangeburg to garner the attention of Democratic candidates over the next year. It is a heavily Democratic county in a state slated to hold the first-in-the-South Democratic presidential primary.

The Democrats plan to hold their first presidential debate on April 26, 2007 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Auditorium on the South Carolina State University campus.

The Orangeburg event is Obama's second scheduled for the state this weekend.

On Friday, Obama is scheduled to speak at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center. Later Saturday, Obama is scheduled to speak in Richmond, Va.

Obama, 45, is the youngest candidate in the Democrats' 2008 primary field dominated by front-runner Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

In his presidential bid announcement made last weekend, the first-term U.S. senator sought to distinguish himself as a staunch opponent of the Iraq War and a White House hopeful whose lack of political experience is an asset.

During his announcement, Obama talked about reshaping the economy for the digital age, investing in education, protecting employee benefits, insuring those who do not have health care, ending poverty, weaning America from foreign oil and fighting terrorism while rebuilding global alliances.

Obama graduated from Columbia University with a degree in political science and a specialty in international relations. He worked as a community organizer in some of Chicago's toughest neighborhoods, helping church groups create job-training programs, reform area schools and improve city services.

He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and was the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review. After law school, Obama organized one of the largest voter registration drives in Chicago history to help Bill Clinton get elected president, and worked as a civil rights lawyer on voting rights and employment discrimination cases in federal and state courts.

Obama's elective career began 10 years ago in the Illinois legislature. He lost a bid for a U.S. House seat, then won the Senate seat in 2004.