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"My opponent, Senator Obama, opposes giving consumers a break from the gas tax," Clinton said at a firehouse. "I understand the American people need some relief," she added, implying that Obama doesn't get it.

Obama has said motorists would not benefit significantly from suspending the gas tax.

"This is his solution to the problems of the energy crisis and your gas bills," Obama told several thousand at a noisy rally in Wilmington. "Keep in mind that the federal gas tax is about 5 percent of your gas bill. If it lasts for three months, you're going to save about $25 or $30, or a half a tank of gas."

The idea to suspend the 18.4 cent federal gas tax and 24.4 cent diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day was first proposed by McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, as a way to lessen the pain at the pump for consumers this summer.

The ad says President Bush has talked about staying in Iraq for 50 years, then plays a clip of McCain saying, "Maybe 100. That'd be fine with me."

The announcer then says: "If all he offers is more of the same, is John McCain the right choice for America's future?"

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said the ad deliberately distorts what McCain, the likely GOP presidential nominee, said.

The committee's chief counsel, Sean Cairncross, said he sent letters Monday to NBC, CNN and MSNBC insisting that they stop airing the commercial.

Restaurant owner Elie Maloof testified that Antoin "Tony" Rezko told him that the person picked to replace Patrick J. Fitzgerald as U.S. attorney in Chicago would end a federal investigation into corruption under Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

"The federal prosecutor would no longer be the federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald would be eliminated," Maloof said at Rezko's fraud trial.

Prosecutors said last week that former Illinois Finance Authority executive director Ali Ata, who is set to take the witness stand as early as Thursday, will testify Rezko told him of a plan to replace Fitzgerald.

Prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve that Ata would say he talked with Rezko about such efforts on the part of Springfield lobbyist Robert Kjellander and former presidential adviser Karl Rove.

The campaign said in a statement Monday that Daskas is withdrawing because of family reasons. It did not elaborate.

The former prosecutor had been considered a strong candidate to unseat Republican incumbent Jon Porter. The 3rd district includes parts of Las Vegas, Henderson and Boulder City.

Porter is seeking a fourth term in the House.

Digits in the phone numbers dialed were generated randomly to reach households with unlisted and listed landline numbers.

Interviews were conducted in both English and Spanish.

As is done routinely in surveys, results were weighted, or adjusted, to ensure that responses accurately reflect the population's makeup by factors such as age, sex, education, region and race.

No more than one time in 20 should chance variations in the sample cause the results to vary by more than plus or minus 3.1 percentage points from the answers that would be obtained if all people in the U.S. were polled. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 4.6 percentage points for Democrats and 5.3 percentage points for Republicans.

The omitted votes were all from Northampton County in the Lehigh Valley.

Pennsylvania Department of State spokeswoman Leslie Amoros said the problem was traced to a mistaken assumption that all of the county's votes had been recorded.

After the numbers were corrected Monday, about 21,000 votes were added to the Democratic presidential race and about 5,300 to the Republican presidential race.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton picked up 13,287 votes and Sen. Barack Obama 7,678 votes for the Democratic presidential nomination. Clinton's lead of 31,583 to 19,893 in Northampton County now matches The Associated Press' figures.

The Indiana ad campaign would be the biggest single expenditure in a state for the mostly union financed group, called the American Leadership Project. The group spent more than $1 million running ads in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

"Indiana has been ground zero for economic anxiety since 2001," said Jason Kinney, an Indiana native and one of the organizers of the American Leadership Project.

The ad quotes commentators who describe Obama's economic plan as deficient. The ad campaign could come at a crucial time for Clinton. The Democratic presidential race in Indiana is a dead heat, according to public opinion polls. Obama, the better-financed candidate, has been spending more than Clinton in the state.

As of its last filing with the Federal Election Commission, the group had raised $1.5 million, almost all of it from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a union that has endorsed Clinton.

They're enlisting your neighbors.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, unveiled the party's new voter turnout strategy to reporters during a conference call last week. The party's "Neighborhood Volunteer" tool kit will allow regular people to act as political operatives and campaign foot soldiers this fall by identifying 25 "targeted voters" near them.

Those would be Democrats or independents who have consistently voted in the last few elections, as well as newly registered voters.

The newly minted party ambassadors eventually will be able to use the program on their home computers to download and customize campaign literature to hand out to their neighbors as they canvass the area talking up the Democrats' presidential nominee, whoever that will be.

The survey released Monday gives the New York senator and former first lady a fresh talking point as she works to raise much-needed campaign cash and persuade pivotal undecided superdelegates to side with her in the drawn-out Democratic primary fight.

Helped by independents, young people and seniors, Clinton gained ground this month in a hypothetical match with Sen. McCain, the GOP nominee-in-waiting. She now leads McCain, 50 percent to 41 percent, while Obama remains virtually tied with McCain, 46 percent to 44 percent.

Both Democrats were roughly even with McCain in the previous poll about three weeks ago.

Since then, Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary, raising questions anew about whether Obama can attract broad swaths of voters needed to triumph in such big states come the fall when the Democratic nominee will go up against McCain. At the same time, Obama was thrown on the defensive by his comment that residents of small-town America were bitter. The Illinois senator also continued to deal with the controversial remarks of his longtime Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, said the veto is unconstitutional, contending that Saturday was the last day the governor could issue a veto. Beshear disagreed.

Since the legislature has officially ended its regular session for this year, it cannot override the veto. Williams said a lawsuit to challenge the veto is likely but would not say if he would file it.

If Beshear's veto stands, Williams said, the governor and his administration would have no authority to build any roads for the next two years.

But Beshear maintains that without his veto, "No change to the highway plan, no matter how badly needed, could be made without new legislation."