July 10 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards said he and presidential candidate John Kerry, will restore corporate responsibility and cut taxes on middle-class families if elected in November.

"Middle-class families will be able to rest assured that John Kerry will look out for their interests, restore corporate responsibility and put our economy back in line with our values,'' Edwards, 51, a North Carolina senator, said in the Democrats' weekly radio address.

Kerry, 60, a four-term Massachusetts senator, and President George W. Bush, 58, accused each other during campaign appearances yesterday of being out of touch with American values, sharpening their attacks as polls show them tied before the November election.

Edwards, who will campaign later today in his hometown of Raleigh, said working Americans are suffering while "it took three long years to see Ken Lay handcuffed and indicted for what he did'' at the failed Enron Corp.

Lay, Enron's former chairman, pleaded not guilty Thursday to the indictment on fraud charges after his company's December 2001 bankruptcy cost 5,600 people their jobs. Investors claimed they lost $30 billion in Enron stock. Bush, campaigning in Pennsylvania yesterday, said "we're bringing wrongdoers to account,'' without mentioning Lay.

Kerry and Edwards are wrapping up a four-day campaign swing from Pennsylvania, to Ohio, Florida, New York, West Virginia and New Mexico. North Carolina, which Bush won by 12 percentage points in 2000, is a southern state where Democrats hope to improve their election chances with Edwards on the ticket.

Southern Strategy

"North Carolina is indeed in play, but Bush still has an edge there for November,'' said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. Steven Wayne, a politics expert at Georgetown University, said Edwards "is liable to help in Louisiana and Florida and to enlarge the Democratic vote in the rest of the South to help'' House and Senate candidates.

With Edwards on the ticket, states such as North Carolina, Florida, Arkansas and Louisiana are more competitive for Kerry, said Thomas Mann, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution. The states, which combined have a quarter of the electoral votes needed to win the presidency, all voted for Bush in 2000.

"If George Bush can't win North Carolina, then he can't win the White House,'' said Merle Black, a professor of politics and government at Emory University in Atlanta. Bush's campaign "will have to spend more resources than they had planned to make sure they win the state.''

Edwards Help in Senate

Edwards' joining the ticket may bolster southern Democrats in the Senate, said Jack Fleer, a political science professor at Wake Forest University. "There are five open seats in the South, four of which are likely to be competitive.''

"It is critical for the Democrats to be competitive in those states if they hope to even hold on to their 48 seats'' in the Senate, said Fleer, author of "North Carolina Politics.''

Kerry and Edwards say middle-class families are squeezed by rising education, energy, and health-care costs under the Bush administration. Kerry wants to repeal Bush's tax cuts for families making more than $200,000 a year and spend the money on education and health care.

"Most middle-class families are struggling every day just to make ends meet,'' Edwards said in his radio address. "You can't save any money because it takes every dime you make to just pay your bills.''

Mill Town

Edwards, who spent his teenage years in Robbins, a North Carolina town of 1,200 people, says he knows firsthand of the struggles middle-class families face.

Six manufacturing plants, including the Milliken & Co. textile mill where Edwards' father, Wallace, worked, have closed in Robbins since 1990, Mickey Brown, Robbins' three-term mayor, said in a interview. The closings cost about 2,500 jobs.

"Monumental changes are needed to help small towns; whatever helps us helps the whole nation,'' Brown said. "It is evident we need some drastic change to help ourselves.''

Bush cited Edwards's career as a personal injury attorney. "You cannot be pro-small business and pro-trial lawyer at the same time,'' the president told a rally in York, Pennsylvania, yesterday. "You have to choose. My opponent made his choice, and he put him on the ticket.''

Edwards earned almost $27 million as a trial lawyer in the four years before joining the Senate in 1999, the New York Times reported, citing figures released by his campaign.

Edwards is preferred by a margin of 8 percentage points over Republican Dick Cheney, 63, to lead the nation should something happen to the president, a Time magazine poll found.

Almost 47 percent of the 1,003 registered voters surveyed July 6-8 preferred Edwards, compared with 38 percent for Cheney, the survey said.

Four other polls taken after Kerry's choice of Edwards produced conflicting results. An Associated Press poll showed Bush widening his lead over Kerry, while an NBC News poll showed Kerry and Edwards with an edge over Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Two other surveys showed the race in a statistical tie.

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