PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania - Hillary Clinton took a center-court stage at Temple University's former basketball arena last night accompanied by political leaders who have years of experience delivering the city's votes to Democratic causes. But despite a decade-and-a-half long relationship with the City of Brotherly Love and many of those leaders' best efforts, this election may not be so kind to the senator from neighboring New York.

Both Clintons have a lot to brag about when it comes to Philadelphia. Greeting a number of labor leaders, local Democratic Party chairs and other long-time politicos, former Philadelphia Mayor and current Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell warmed up the crowd, rattling off a list of accomplishments from Bill Clinton's tenure in the White House. The administration helped restore the shipyard, broke ground on the Constitution Center and put a thousand new police on the streets, Rendell said.

"Anybody who doesn't think the '90s was a good time for Philadelphia? The '90s was a great time for Philadelphia thanks to Bill and Hillary Clinton," Rendell said. The incumbent mayor, Michael Nutter, summed up his city's present responsibility: "Who would have thought that Philadelphia and our suburbs and Pennsylvania will play a critical role in deciding who will be our next president of the United States?"

But in a heavily African-American city surrounded by well-educated liberal enclaves, political watchers say, Clinton's best option may be to cut into rival Barack Obama's support and run up bigger margins around the state. "Obama's going to win the city," said Franklin and Marshall College political scientist Terry Madonna, a Pennsylvania political expert.

On the other hand, Nutter told Politics Nation he expects Clinton to outperform. "She'll do extremely well in Philadelphia. She's well-known, she's well-liked and she's well-respected," he said, though he downplayed the city's importance to Clinton's overall chances here. "There are significant areas of support all over Pennsylvania for Senator Clinton, but Philadelphia, you know, certainly has significant population and a population that is very interested in her message."

Nutter also refused to speculate on what percentage Clinton needs from Philadelphia in order to win the state as a whole. "Six weeks out, I'm not going to get into the numbers game," he said.

"The Clintons have deep roots here, and that will offset some of" the Philadelphia margin, Madonna said, estimating that 55%-60% of the city's vote turnout will be African American, a demographic that has broken overwhelmingly for Obama. Add to that wealthy white voters in areas like Chestnut Hill and Germantown, northwest of downtown, who are expected to vote with Obama and Clinton has an even steeper road to climb.

If she does not meet those high expectations, Clinton can make up any deficit in the western portion of the state, especially in Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located. That area, Madonna said, has been growing in influence in recent years, while Philadelphia has seen a relative drop in electoral influence. Still, the city is likely to be a big part of the Keystone State's electoral math, contributing up to one quarter of the votes cast in the Democratic primary, though Madonna thinks that number is optimistic.

"The battleground will be the Philly suburbs, the LeHigh Valley and South-Central Pennsylvania," Madonna said. Those areas voted very differently in the most recent hotly-contested Pennsylvania Democratic primary, when Rendell faced now-Senator Bob Casey in the race for governor in 2002.

Then, Rendell ran up huge margins of nearly five-to-one support in his city and its suburbs, while winning the valley and the South-Central region by much narrower fractions. Now, "if Obama wants to win, he's got to do something" in those areas. "Casey plays Clinton, with blue-collar, working-class Catholics. Obama plays Rendell, [building on support from] the city and the 'burbs," Madonna said.

With six weeks to go before April 22, the Clinton campaign has started on the same experience theme she used, to some success, in recent primaries in Ohio and Texas. "The time for games is over. We've moved into the playoffs on our way to the Super Bowl," Nutter told the crowd at Temple University.

But while Clinton hit Obama earlier in the day, during a rally in Harrisburg, she let Nutter take care of it in his home city. "It's easy when you're not on the field to talk about what you would do, what you could do, what you should have done. This candidate's been on the field," he said, pointing to Clinton. "You want to run for mayor, you want to run for governor, you want to run for president, you gotta have some experience up in here."

Later, Nutter said he won election to the mayor's office the same way Clinton will. "They knew that I had the experience to serve the city well," he said. "Senator Clinton brings the same thing. She has the experience. She's been working for thirty-plus years on behalf of children, their families and other people who need help and support."

Clinton's strategy of playing up experience continues in Pennsylvania even as voters in another state told exit pollsters the issue was less important for them. Mississippians overwhelmingly said the ability to bring change was more important to their choice of a candidate than the right experience, by a 53%-19% margin. Clinton still won the experience argument, by a large margin, but if that is to be her coalition, she will have to refocus the debate.

Exit polls from Mississippi also echoed another recent trend that has to have Nutter and the Clinton campaign feeling optimistic: Among those who had decided on a candidate in the last week, Clinton won a narrow 51%-48% majority. But nearly four in five voters had decided more than a week ago, and they chose Obama by a wider 61%-39% margin.

Nutter said Philadelphia voters, at the beginning of the six-week sprint, have poking and prodding to do before they make a decision. "Philadelphia has a rich history and tradition of taking politics very seriously and asking very tough questions of people who run for office," he said. "We're just starting this effort."

Clinton herself suggested voters will experience something akin to Iowa caucus-goers in the next six weeks, and they, like Iowans and New Hampshire voters, will have a real chance to evaluate the candidates. "I want you to think about this campaign as a long job interview," she told the crowd at Temple. "Because each of us is going to be coming and talking about what we have done and what we want to do, and you're going to have to decide, who would you hire for the toughest job in the world?"

Whether Philadelphians and voters in the rest of the state make their decisions based on experience, as in Ohio, or a need for change, as in Mississippi, the outcome in the Keystone State could be decisive, and voters here know it: "From Pennsylvania to Pennsylvania Avenue," read one sign in Clinton's crowd.