Albuquerque, N.M. ? Barack Obama kicked off his last week of campaigning before the Democratic National Convention by reaching out Monday to a still-elusive voting bloc – working women who preferred Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination.

Addressing a women’s roundtable Monday in Albuquerque a day after Sen. Clinton had been in town stumping for him, Obama talked about his support for equal pay legislation and told the women that his mother had struggled as a single mom. He said that women on average earn 77 cents for every dollar that men earn, and that he didn’t want his own two daughters, 10 and 7, to face gender discrimination.

“When I hear that women are being treated unfairly in the workplace,” he said, “I get mad and I get frustrated.”

In this week when both the presumptive presidential nominees, Obama and Republican Sen. John McCain, may announce their running mates, both candidates are looking to cover lots of ground.

McCain, campaigning in Florida, accused Obama of being weak on foreign policy and unwilling to admit that President Bush’s “surge” policy in Iraq is working.

“With less than three months to go before the election, a lot of people are still trying to square Senator Obama’s varying position on the surge in Iraq,” McCain told the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Orlando.

“First, he opposed the surge and confidently predicted that it would fail. Then he tried to prevent funding for the troops who carried out the surge. Not content to merely predict failure in Iraq, my opponent tried to legislate failure,” McCain said.

McCain also told the veterans that Obama is driven more by ambition than by ability to be president.

The crowd with Obama booed loudly he told them that McCain wanted to continue Bush’s tax cuts and give breaks to oil companies.

“Everybody making more than $2.5 million raise your hands,” Obama said. “You might want to vote for John McCain.”

Earlier, at the roundtable discussion, Obama ridiculed his rival’s support for the sort of personal health savings accounts that President Bush also supports.