In a state where even the Young Turks have gray hairs, the fight for Democratic delegates is a study in organization contrasts at once subtle and intriguing.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, the putative front-runner, enjoys support and staffing from the top-down, with the governor counseling on everything from themes to venues, and seasoned operatives executing the plan.

On Barack Obama's side, it's bottom-up with a twist: some old Rendell hands, schooled in the Byzantine traditions of Pennsylvania politics, are advising the challenger and employing the Rendell playbook from six years ago.

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One of the authors of that playbook, which gave Mr. Rendell the Democratic nomination for governor in 2002, is David Sweet.

"The Obama formula for victory would be somewhat similar to the Rendell formula for victory," said Mr. Sweet. "Do very well in the southeast, do as well as you can in Allegheny County and hold on for dear life in the rest of the state."

That was how Mr. Rendell snatched the party nomination from Bob Casey Jr., who went on to become a U.S. senator from Pennsylvania and, on Friday, the latest high-profile figure to endorse Mr. Obama.

That Mr. Sweet knows the Rendell formula cannot be in doubt. He managed Mr. Rendell's gubernatorial campaign and later presided over the governor's transition team.

Such are the ways of Pennsylvania's political sleight-of-hand. A cadre of party troops elect a governor. The governor moves to elect a president while the people who elected him side with the other candidate.

On the Clinton side: Gov. Ed Rendell, an outsize political force who has not only opened his Rolodex on behalf of Mrs. Clinton, but who daily kibitzes with her national staff.

Mr. Rendell has assigned two veteran campaign operatives to key posts: Mary Isenhour, a Kansas native who headed the coordinated Democratic campaign in Pennsylvania in 2006, as state director; and staff member Kevin Kinross, who managed the campaign of Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato in 2005 and Mr. Rendell's western re-election campaign in 2006, to head operations in the west.

On the Obama side are an eclectic assemblage of operatives from past campaigns. Along with Mr. Sweet, they include Dan Wofford, son of the former senator and himself a former candidate for Congress in the state's southeast; and Peter Buttenwieser, an heir to the Lehman brokerage fortune and an influential, if lesser known, Democratic fundraiser..

Names from campaigns past have surfaced at the Obama headquarters on Sansom Street in Philadelphia's downtown, including Celia Fischer, a former aide to Lt. Gov. Mark Singel and onetime campaign manager for Senate candidate Joe Hoeffel; and Jim DeMay, an out-of-stater who worked both the Pennsylvania Gore campaign of 2000 and Mr. Rendell's re-election in 2006, who was briefly called in for a time to run the Obama effort here.

So total is the appropriation of the Rendell game plan by his old troops that they even set up the Obama state headquarters in the same Philadelphia office from which the Rendell campaign was run.

The early primaries were packed together, creating a whirl in which candidates sometimes blew through states. In Pennsylvania, which has had a seven week window leading up to the April 22 primary, the going has been more deliberate, meaning state-level advisers are getting more attention.

"They're the first presidential campaign I've dealt with since 1980 that pays a lot of attention to what the locals say, the local input. That's tremendously helpful," said Mr. Rendell, who says the Clinton staff took his advice to hold off on a Pittsburgh visit for several days until he could cement endorsements from Mr. Onorato and Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.

"That picture was worth tons. So they listen. This is the first presidential campaign where the campaign staff and the consultants listen to some degree," he said.

On the Obama side, there is the same sense of history.

Consider, for instance, Cliff Levine, the Obama coordinator in the west. An expert in election law with the Pittsburgh firm of Thorp Reed & Armstrong, he supported Mr. Rendell in past elections, provided legal counsel in Democratic ballot challenges in 2004 and 2006 and knew of Barack Obama through a brother-in-law who attended prep school in Hawaii with "Barry Obama."

Mr. Buttenwieser later brought them together in one of a series of fundraisers, first when Mr. Obama entered the senate, later when Mr. Obama was called in to help Mr. Casey in his successful 2006 challenge to incumbent U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum.

"I deal with a lot of political people and he was really extraordinary. And what was remarkable was how nuanced his thinking is," Mr. Levine said.

That nuance came into play, said Mr. Buttenwieser, when Mr. Obama smoothed the waters with abortion rights Democrats in the southeast, a group chary of Mr. Casey's -- and his father's -- high-profile opposition to legal abortion.

"He addressed the issue very directly," Mr. Buttenwieser recalled of the Obama speech to about 50 opinion leaders in Philadelphia. "He said to the most ardent pro-choice people in Philadelphia that it was a great mistake to focus on one issue to the exclusion of others."

After Mr. Casey won the Senate seat, Mr. Buttenwieser and Mr. Levine continued to explore Mr. Obama's future, expecting the nomination to close in the early contests, meaning they'd play less a role here than chipping in with the national campaign.

What Mr. Levine brought to the table was a scraped-knuckles history in traditional Democratic politics. He entered the game in his native Buffalo, where the legendary Joe Crangle ran the Erie County Democratic Party.

After a stint on the staff of the late New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Mr. Levine went to Duke Law School and moved to Pittsburgh, where he gained government law experience clerking for Commonwealth Court Judge David Craig.

Mr. Buttenwieser had been a principal in the Philadelphia Public Schools, and had long been active helping Democratic senate candidates, notably his close friend, former Sen. Tom Daschle.

Mr. Buttenwieser took charge of the east, and Mr. Levine took charge of the west and, in a series of fundraisers in June of 2007, they collected a surprising $600,000 for the Obama campaign.

When Mr. Obama carried the Iowa caucuses, phones started ringing, a core field operation was set up with Mr. Levine coordinating the state's west, and Dan Wofford and, later, Ms. Fischer, coordinating Philadelphia and the east. A surprise phone call from Mr. Sweet, who is based in Harrisburg, bridged the gap and gave the camp a statewide presence.

"David Sweet knows so much more about Pennsylvania politics than all of us do," said Mr. Buttenwieser. "He would be the perfect kind of person to work with for the professional staff of the campaign. The political part of the campaign is relying on him pretty heavily."

Mr. Sweet made clear that the campaign's hope is to trim the current double-digit deficit in the polls to show continuing momentum that could pressure Mrs. Clinton to withdraw before the convention.

"I know the strategy," said Mr. Rendell. "It's a little eerie." He predicted that the Obama forces cannot muster the 80 percent needed in Philadelphia, nor the 63 percent Mr. Rendell carried in the Lehigh Valley six years ago.

Mr. Rendell is impressed with the Obama camp -- after all, key parts of it were once his -- but thinks the one he has now put in place will suffice nicely.

When asked by the Clinton forces to suggest a state director, Mr. Rendell plucked Ms. Isenhour from the state committee, where she had run the daily operation for then chairman T.J. Rooney after coming to the state in 1999.

"Look, who's kidding who here? I'm sure most of it was they asked the governor and, you know, somehow my name came up," said Ms. Isenhour. "Believe me, I was flabbergasted."

Flabbergasted, perhaps, but not inexperienced. She worked for the state legislative campaign branch of the Democratic National Committee and Pennsylvania was among the states assigned her. She oversaw the coordinated Senate-gubernatorial-legislative race for the state party in 2006 and also gained high marks for helping to win several statewide judicial spots for the Democrats last year.

At present, both she and Mr. Kinross largely coordinate moves scoped out by Mr. Rendell.

"He's been very hands-on with all levels of the campaign," Mr. Kinross said of the governor. "Whenever they want to do a rally in Western Pennsylvania, for example, he'll say 'Well, we should go down to Fayette County. That would be a good bloc of votes for the senator.' So we go out and find the venue and work with the local officials and set up the event."

Logistics often amounts to strategy for such a campaign. With Mrs. Clinton's base among seniors, smaller towns and rural areas, presence alone can make a difference.

Mr. Kinross made certain the group had offices in Beaver County, Johnstown, Uniontown, Washington County and, perhaps a first, St. Mary's in Elk County. The small town, home of Straub Beer, is also a population center in the 15^th Congressional District. In Pennsylvania, delegates are apportioned by congressional district.

It is in those regions where the Rendell strategy and camp of 2008 will compete with the Rendell strategy and camp of 2002, one side hanging on for dear life in hopes of surviving Pennsylvania, the other hanging on in hopes of surviving the entire race.