FAYETTEVILLE - Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton began her North Carolina campaign Thursday, promising to stand up for American workers by focusing on issues such as plant closings, health care and gas prices.

"I know people in North Carolina have seen their jobs disappear," Clinton told an overflow crowd of about 1,000 people at Wake Tech Community College. "I know that is very painful because they feel the brunt over global forces over which they have no control."

"No American should be left at the side of the road," she said.

Clinton proposed a $2.5 billion per year work-force training program that includes money for worker retraining, grants to help students attend college, and on-the-job training. She also called for a new program to extend federal aid known as Pell Grants to workers who take classes to update their skills.

The New York senator launched her campaign not at one of the state's famous universities but at community colleges near Raleigh and Winston-Salem and at Terry Sanford High School in Fayetteville.

North Carolina's May 6 primary is looming as a major test of whether she can catch Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who is leading among delegates and in the popular vote. Clinton promised to crisscross the state during the next six weeks.

Obama is leading in pledged delegates, 1,414 to 1,247. There are 10 primaries left, with North Carolina the second largest after Pennsylvania.

"I am going to try to do as well as I can here in North Carolina," Clinton said in an interview in Fayetteville. "I know I'm facing an uphill climb because Sen. Obama has a strong base of support here."

"But I want North Carolinians to know that I value their votes, and on the issues that are important to this state, like how we turn the economy around, start growing manufacturing jobs again, and providing health care and affordable college and bring our troops home from Iraq, I would be the best president," she said. "So I'm going to make that case to the voters here."

Clinton said that negotiations for a CBS-sponsored debate with Obama to be held in North Carolina are continuing and she expects to know something during the next couple of days. She also said she has had conversations with her formal rival John Edwards and his wife Elizabeth, but said she did not know whether they would endorse her.

During her first two speeches, Clinton virtually ignored Obama, who has already campaigned in the state twice. But she criticized Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, saying he seemed unconcerned about the credit crisis that affects so many people.

On Tuesday, McCain said the government should not intervene to save or reward banks or small borrowers who behave irresponsibly. He did not suggest a plan to solve the nation's housing crisis.

Struggling workers

"If the phone was ringing, he would just let it ring and ring and ring," Clinton said of McCain, referring to her television ad that asks whom you want to be president when the White House phone sounds in the night.

Clinton said she knows North Carolina has shed many jobs. She said she understands that many people are struggling, working second jobs to make ends meet. And she noted that the price of gas has risen 75 cents per gallon in Raleigh during the past year.

"The American people are the hardest workers in the world," Clinton said. "And yet for too many in North Carolina and elsewhere, hard work doesn't seem to be paying off."

Clinton said she would call for a timeout on new trade deals. She said she would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement -- passed by Congress during her husband's administration -- to require foreign competitors to comply with labor and environmental standards. She also called for a stiffer U.S. posture toward China, particularly when it comes to currency manipulation that provides unfair trade advantages.

The manufacturing sector, which accounted for a quarter of North Carolina's economy in 1997, has shed more than 250,000 jobs as companies moved operations to cheaper locations in Latin America and Asia.

That shift forced state leaders to step up industry recruitment and increase programs to prepare workers for new jobs. North Carolina is the largest recipient of federal funding through the Trade Adjustment Assistance program, which helps displaced workers.

The state's allocation for training in fiscal 2008 is $14.8 million.

At her stops, Clinton was met by good-sized audiences -- disproportionally women -- often chanting "Hill-a-ry, Hill-a-ry."

Her comments were on target for Austin Morris, a teacher at Southeast Raleigh High School, who had not decided for whom to vote. "I'm really looking for a candidate," Morris said, "who will take the best care of the American worker."

(Staff writer Jonathan Cox contributed to this report.)