Mary Rountree was the first person in line for Barack Obama's Raleigh town meeting.

Rountree, a retired nurse from Raleigh, said she showed up outside the Kerr Scott Building at the State Fairgrounds on Blue Ridge Road at 6 a.m.

She waited alone, sitting in a fold-out chair and wrapped in blankets, for more than an hour.

"I like what Obama stands for," Rountree said. "He's not the status quo, and I believe he can make a difference."

She was later joined by Barbara Brotherson of Raleigh, who was the first person to collect tickets Wednesday for today's event. Brotherson said she arrived outside Obama for America headquarters on Morgan Street at 1:45 a.m. Tickets were not distributed until 9:30 a.m.

"I've never done this before," Brotherson said. "But he is the man for these times."

DES MOINES—James Lowe, a former coal miner from Wise County, Virginia, has long been a mainstay of Democratic candidate John Edwards' political stump speech.

Now Lowe's story is being featured in a new TV ad that is being aired in Iowa, where Edwards is locked in a close battle with Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, Rob Christensen reports.

Edwards uses Lowe, who he met in July during an anti-poverty tour, to illustrate how the health care system is broken. Lowe had a cleft palate which prevented him from speaking for the first 50 years of his life. His gained his voice after medical professionals voluntarily performed an operation.

"Fifty years without voice—in America," Edwards says in the ad. "This is wrong. It is immoral. When are we going to stop letting drug companies, insurance companies and their lobbyists run this country? America belong to us. James Lowe finally got his voice, now it's time for yours."