McCain says Ohio steel jobs not coming back

By Steve Holland

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain told an economically ailing Ohio city on Tuesday that lost steel jobs are not coming back but with proper training, workers can rebound just like his once-dead campaign.

"I can't tell you that these jobs are ever coming back to this magnificent part of the country," McCain said at Youngstown State University. "But I will commit to giving these workers a second chance. They need it, they deserve it."

McCain came to Ohio, a key battleground state that is important to both parties in November's presidential election, while Democrats Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Clinton were busy with Pennsylvania's primary on

Tuesday.

McCain, on a tour of "forgotten places in America" where economic prosperity has been elusive, visited a shuttered steel fabrication plant.

He is trying this week to appeal to moderate voters with his "Time for Action" tour that took him to Alabama's rural "Black Belt" on Monday, an area that voted Democratic in 2004 although the state overall strongly backed President George W. Bush in that election.

In an Ohio town-hall meeting on Tuesday, McCain returned to a theme that hurt him in January in Michigan, when he said lost auto jobs there were not coming back.

The Arizona senator said he believes Americans need to take advantage of opportunities of a new economy, not cling to the old economy.