Click here to watch "Tammie" and "Jewel."

Hillary Rodham Clinton and her surrogates are playing political hardball in Pennsylvania right now, but in North Carolina -- where Barack Obama maintains a double-digit lead in polling -- she appears to be treading more lightly. In two new ads out in the Tar Heel State, Clinton makes no mention of last week's sniping over oil company money or this weekend's spat over Obama's remarks in San Francisco, focusing instead on Clinton's biography and her plans to address record high gas prices.

"Tammie," which hit the airwaves across the state today, is the first follow-up to Clinton's debut spot in North Carolina asking voters to submit questions for her to answer.

In the minute-long spot, Clinton reads a question about the rising price of gasoline hurting consumers. "Well, Tammie, I hear this everywhere," Clinton says. "People like you and everyone else are paying way too much at the pump." By sympathizing with voters' plight and mentioning her policy proposals only glancingly, Clinton puts an emotional spin on an issue that some of her previous advertising (subscription) approached bearing specific figures and wonky details.

Clinton's second new ad, which began airing on Friday, similarly aims for the heart with footage of a 91-year-old woman eloquently praising Clinton at a campaign event. Clinton, says Jewel Hodges, "had to climb up the rough side of the mountain in life." Comparing Clinton's struggles with those challenges facing the country as a whole, Hodges tells the audience, "We need someone that is ready, willing and able to bring America back up."

Together, the two ads suggest that Clinton is pitching a softer sell in North Carolina than she has been in Pennsylvania -- for the time being, at least. And by focusing the spots on two individual women, one white and one black, Clinton's early advertising in the state seems to signal an understanding that her campaign must court women of all races, rather than ceding black voters to Obama.