Tennessee May Be Election Milestone

Camilla Meek is the worst nightmare of the candidates chasing John F. Kerry in the Democratic presidential race.

Until recently, she didn’t think much of the senator from Massachusetts, whom she had seen up close as a Boston native who moved to Nashville in the fall. She still doesn’t find him particularly warm or charismatic.

But his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire persuaded her that Kerry represented the Democrats’ best hope of beating President Bush. Which explains why, on a dismal, rainy night this week, Meek was sitting in the hallway of the senator’s cramped campaign headquarters, hand-lettering a “Kerry Rocks” poster for the rally scheduled for him today in Nashville.

“Frankly, I didn’t think he was going to get this far,” said Meek, a sales associate for a natural foods store. “But when I saw he was doing this well, I thought it was really important to get behind him, because we need the best candidate we can get against Bush.”

Voters like Meek have reshaped the landscape in Tuesday’s Tennessee primary -- a contest that looms as a potential milestone in the Democratic race.

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark are making enormous efforts in Tennessee, hoping to slow Kerry’s momentum and deepen questions about his ability to compete in the South. But polls show that Kerry, although he has been almost invisible in the state, has surged into a strong position.

With surveys showing Kerry also running well in Virginia, the other state with a primary Tuesday, a win by him in Tennessee could leave Clark and Edwards struggling to continue their candidacies.

“It may be the make-or-break state,” said John Rowley, a Democratic consultant advising Clark in Tennessee.

As in many other states voting this month, the confrontation here will test the ability of money and effort to withstand momentum. Edwards visited Tennessee more often than any other candidate last year, and he plans to appear in the state every day until the vote.

Clark has mounted a bus tour of Tennessee. He also has the largest staff and has spent more heavily on television ads than any of the other candidates -- Clark had aired nearly $980,000 worth of commercials in Tennessee through January, according to TNSMI/CMAG, a firm that tracks political advertising.

Neither Edwards nor Kerry began advertising in the state until Wednesday.

Kerry has collected the support of some high-profile Democrats in Tennessee, most notably from Rep. Harold Ford Jr., a leading African American politician. But Kerry’s rally today will be his first appearance in the state since April. He may return for a stop in Memphis on Monday.

Yet the most recent public poll, conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research just after Kerry’s win in New Hampshire, showed him backed by 31% of those planning to vote in Tennessee’s primary, compared with 22% for Clark, 13% for Edwards and 7% for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean.

Dean has abandoned the state in spite of his endorsement from former Vice President Al Gore, once the state’s most prominent Democrat.

Despite Kerry’s rise, most local observers don’t believe he has locked up the state. “It is hard to say any of these candidates has depth of support,” said Bruce Oppenheimer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “So that creates a situation that is pretty volatile.”

Tennessee allows Republicans and independents to vote in the Democratic primary, and that could hurt Kerry -- exit polls of voters showed he didn’t run as well with those groups as with Democrats in Oklahoma and South Carolina.

Still, Edwards and Clark face two big problems in the state. The first is Kerry. The second is each other.

Both camps believe their man would have a better chance to beat Kerry if the other was out of the race. As it is, the two appear likely to divide the voters who consider Kerry too liberal or a weak opponent for Bush in the South. That has some local analysts predicting the candidates will finish in a three-way pileup, as they did in Oklahoma.

“My prediction is that we’re going to be late into the night finding out who is the winner,” said Randy Buttons, the state Democratic chairman.

Edwards and Clark are using Tennessee as the testing ground for sharper messages against Kerry. Even as Rep. Dick Gephardt, who ended his presidential candidacy last month, endorsed Kerry on Friday, Edwards has been pursuing blue-collar votes by echoing the Missouri congressman’s denunciation of free trade.

Edwards believes he can benefit from his criticism of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which Kerry supported and which passed before Edwards entered the Senate in 1999.

“Just since the passage of NAFTA ... Tennessee has lost 96,000 manufacturing jobs,” Edwards told a crowd in Nashville Thursday. “Think of the devastation that creates.... Twenty years ago, we talked about ‘Buy America.’ Remember that? How about ‘Hire America’?”

But Edwards, who has emphasized the positive nature of his campaign, may be dulling the edge of that thrust by not making clear in his appearances that Kerry supported the treaty.

Clark, meanwhile, is borrowing a page from Dean, presenting himself as a Washington outsider and denouncing Edwards and Kerry for supporting Bush’s education package and the resolution authorizing war in Iraq.

As for Dean himself, the race’s onetime front-runner has written off Tennessee. He is neither appearing nor advertising in the state.

Gore may promote Dean when the 2000 presidential nominee is honored at a dinner in Nashville Sunday. But other than that, Gore has been as invisible as Dean on the state’s campaign trail.

“Gore in Tennessee has been kept out of sight like Saddam Hussein in a 12-foot-deep-rat hole,” wrote columnist Tim Chavez in the Nashville Tennessean Friday.

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Tennessee profile

Tuesday’s Tennessee primary looms as a crucial contest for Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark. A victory by either could help slow the momentum of Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the front-runner in the Democratic presidential race. Edwards and Clark, who was raised in Arkansas, are stressing their Southern roots as they campaign in the state.

Snapshot

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Population

Statewide: 5.7 million

Urban residents: 63.6%

Residents 65 and older: 12.4%

Median household income: $36,360

Families below poverty line: 10.3%

Families with preschool children below poverty line: 18.7%

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Ethnicity

White: 79.2%

Black: 16.4%

Latino: 2.2%

Asian: 1%

Other (Some respondents list multiple races or races not shown here): 1.2%

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Occupation

Management/ professional: 29.5%

Sales/office: 26.1

Production/ transportation of goods: 19.9

Service: 13.7

Construction: 10.3

Farming, fishing and forestry: 0.6

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Top exports: Cotton, automobiles and parts, airplane parts, whiskey

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Sources: U.S. Census Bureau and Almanac of American Politics

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Researched by Susannah Rosenblatt

Times staff writers Ellen Barry, Scott Martelle and Eric Slater contributed to this report.