At Champ's Barbershop School here, Maria Hall, the owner's wife, said she registered to vote for the first time so she could cast a ballot for Democrat Barack Obama. "I think he's going to be a great president," said Hall, 35.
Julianne Dickson, a former City Council president and die-hard Democrat, isn't sure what she'll do in November if Obama is the party's nominee instead of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Dickson, 66, coached women's field hockey and recalls begging for funds before the passage of Title IX, the 1972 federal law that gave women equal access to school athletics. Today, "I owe my job to a sex discrimination suit," says Dickson, an insurance agent hired after her company settled a case with female employees who said they were losing promotions to less experienced men.

The idea that Obama might stop Clinton from becoming the nation's first female major-party presidential nominee has Dickson thinking that "it's happening again. I know that's why it has become so personal to me."

Hall and Dickson represent the promise and the pitfalls looming for Democrats as they prepare to vote Tuesday in a state that encapsulates many of the political challenges the candidates must overcome in November against Republican John McCain.