WARSAW, Va. — The quest by Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama for toss-up Virginia has gone country.

McCain is looking to run up enormous margins in rural Republican strongholds. Obama is fighting just as hard to stay in play.

How country has it gone?

At the same moment on Tuesday, current and former Mississippi governors toured opposite ends of the Virginia countryside for the campaigns, neither conceding a single city, town or crossroads.

"This is happening in Virginia, and I think it's happening in a lot of other states," former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus, a Democrat, said during a stop for Obama in this Tidewater town in Virginia's rural, Republican-leaning Northern Neck.

"One of the reasons I think Obama is going to be successful is he has not written off small-town, rural voters," Mabus said.

In the past week, both campaigns hit full throttle in what McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer, in an MSNBC interview, called "real Virginia," a comment viewed as a slap at the populous and affluent Washington, D.C., suburbs and a base of Democratic voting strength.

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Obama was in Roanoke on Friday, his fourth visit to western or Southside Virginia since June.

Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy, set aside Tuesday and Wednesday to campaign for the Democrat in southwestern Virginia.

Former Sen. George Allen, R-Va., and Todd Palin, husband of McCain running mate Sarah Palin, have stumped along Virginia's North Carolina and Tennessee state lines, including Sunday's NASCAR race in Martinsville.

Mississippi's Republican governor, Haley Barbour, joined Allen on Monday, and Barbour campaigned Tuesday in coal country with former Virginia Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore.

"My impression is there aren't a whole lot of undecideds out here," Barbour said in a telephone interview.

After weeks of bad news about the economy that had hurt McCain, Barbour said he didn't expect crowds at McCain events in Virginia to be as large or loud as they were _ "stronger than an acre of garlic," as he put it in his deep Delta drawl.

The area where Barbour campaigned, Virginia's 9th Congressional District, blends pro-gun, Bible Belt social conservatism with defiant, United Mine Workers labor activism. They're Reagan Democrats who have enthusiastically elected Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., to 13 terms.

McCain's arsenal includes claims that Obama considers coal a dirty energy source and wants it taxed. He also notes a comment Obama running mate Joe Biden made in Ohio that no coal-fired power plants should be built in the United States.

McCain also is betting that ads linking Obama to 1960s radical William Ayers will gain more traction among rural voters than they have in the cities and suburbs.

McCain's challenge, Barbour said, is to lock in his supporters and turn them out in impressive numbers on Nov. 4. It's a proven Republican formula that made Democrats the losers in Virginia in every presidential race since 1968. Virginia has 13 electoral votes.

But in 2001, Democrat Mark Warner was elected governor by showing his party that it can compete in rural areas and, while not winning them all, keep the GOP from mustering the lopsided margins necessary to offset Democratic strength in northern Virginia and urban areas. Democrats have used variations of Warner's plan to win another governor's race and to unseat Allen in 2006.

Obama and McCain also are battling for rural voters and the 15 electoral votes at stake in neighboring North Carolina, another reliably Republican state also now in play. North Carolina has voted Republican in presidential elections since 1976.

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On the Net:

McCain: http://www.johnmccain.com

Obama: http://www.barackobama.com