JACKSONVILLE, Florida (Reuters) --
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards delivered his message of empathy with the struggling middle class Sunday as he jet-hopped among swing states in the last frenzied bid for votes in Tuesday's election.
Jumping among Ohio, Maine, Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Minnesota, the senator from North Carolina spent the campaign's final weekend giving his stump speech in rally after rally.
At a predominantly black church in Jacksonville, Florida, on Sunday he recalled what he said were better times under former Democratic President Clinton, and urged the congregation to take advantage of early voting rules and cast ballots immediately after the service.
"There are forces, there are powerful forces, fighting against justice,"
Edwards said, referring to Florida's chaotic balloting in 2000. "We're going to make sure your votes are counted this time."
As polls showed a virtual dead heat in the contest between Republican President Bush and Democratic challenger Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, Edwards flew to Bangor on Saturday seeking Maine's four electoral votes.
"We will fight for you every single day we are in the White House. Your cause is our cause," Edwards told a crowd at a chilly outdoor rally.
He accused Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney of siding with big pharmaceutical companies, big oil companies, the Saudi royal family and Halliburton, the big government contractor Cheney once headed, instead of the American people.
In Ohio's southeastern district, considered a wild card in that pivotal state, Edwards sought to tap the area's reputation for rejecting incumbents during tough economic times, trying to offset Bush's appeal to the socially conservative area.
In his warm drawl, Edwards told the crowd with labor union hats and signs assembled outside a National Guard Armory in Marietta that Bush and Cheney lacked compassion for families struggling to send their children to college, or people with bills piling up who fear they will lose their jobs.
"George Bush and Dick Cheney, they don't hear the voices of the people we grew up with," said the son of a southern mill worker, the first in his family to attend college who went on to become a successful trial lawyer and U.S. senator.
