Clark Back in Race With Win in Okla.

Faced with finding victory or fading away, retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark locked up his first primary win Tuesday in Oklahoma, defeating North Carolina Sen. John Edwards by about 1,300 votes. Clark also pulled off second-place finishes in Arizona, New Mexico and North Dakota.

Just hours after the campaign had been mulling the possibility of flying its candidate home to Little Rock, Ark., to bow out of the Democratic presidential contest, the self-described “old soldier from Arkansas” was back in the fight.

“The results are in. We have won,” Clark told a cheering crowd of 300 at the Renaissance Hotel here. “Oklahoma is OK by me!

“I couldn’t be prouder of your support,” he added, “in this first election that I’ve ever won.”

Clark finished a weak fourth in South Carolina, a state in which he had hoped to show well. Even so, the campaign promised Tuesday to go forward.

But considering Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry’s rapidly growing collection of triumphs -- in Missouri, Arizona, North Dakota, Delaware and New Mexico on Tuesday -- and Edwards’ win in South Carolina, the political novice faces an uphill climb for the nomination.

Clark’s challenge now is to generate some momentum. Kerry and Edwards have remained in the media spotlight since the New Hampshire primary last month, where Clark finished third, while news of his campaign has been buried well down in most national campaign stories.

Even so, the Army veteran for weeks has stayed relentlessly on message -- focusing on what he says are the many failings of the Bush administration. Clark has gone on the attack against his fellow Democrats just once, criticizing Kerry recently for a comment he made 12 years ago calling affirmative action “divisive.” But Clark dropped the criticism the next day.

His message of growing up in the South with modest means, of patriotism, faith and inclusion, has been tailored more to individual voters than a national audience. Clark has granted interviews to small newspapers and television and radio stations almost every day.

“We need an America where debate and dissent and questioning your leaders and holding them accountable is the highest form of patriotism,” Clark told the crowd here Tuesday night.

The retired four-star general did not enter the race until mid-September and has had to play catch-up since. “We came a long way in four months, haven’t we?” Clark’s wife, Gert, asked supporters at the victory rally.

Low name recognition has been a problem for Clark. In New Hampshire, he began the race with only 10% to 15% of voters knowing who he was. Those numbers shot into the 70% range by the time of the Jan. 27 primary, but it took Clark a full month of almost daily campaigning. Polls of some of the states that voted Tuesday showed he still had relatively low recognition numbers.

As the results began to roll in Tuesday, Clark, his wife, son and top aides sat down to dinner at an Oklahoma City hotel restaurant.

“I’m someone who’s had more executive leadership than anybody in the race,” Clark said over his plate of chicken. “The only person in the race who’s ever negotiated a peace agreement ... or conducted foreign policy. There are a lot of people who can talk about it, but I’m the only one who’s ever done it.”

Earlier in the day, Wesley K. Clark Jr. had chatted with reporters outside the campaign’s state headquarters here, much to the chagrin of staffers who learned later of his comments.

“It’s been a really disillusioning experience,” the 34-year-old screenwriter said of his time on the campaign trail. “We sacrificed a hell of a lot for this country over 34 years. We lived in a trailer when I was a freshman in high school.”

He also lambasted the media for covering what he said was trivia at the expense of meatier issues. His favorite example, he said, was news reports of his father shedding his suit coat and donning sweaters. He also mentioned coverage of Clark’s caravan getting speeding tickets Saturday night.

“What did we get on the news this weekend? Speeding tickets in Oklahoma,” he said. “You got to be ... kidding me. It’s a hell of a way to pick a president.”