Kerry Builds On His Momentum With 2 Big Wins

Sen. John F. Kerry romped to victory Saturday in Michigan and Washington state, tightening his grip on the Democratic presidential nomination and burying second-place finisher Howard Dean in contests the former front-runner once targeted as key to his campaign.

In a further blow, Dean lost the endorsement of one of his biggest labor backers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The head of the group, Gerald McEntee, delivered the news to the former Vermont governor at Dean campaign headquarters in Burlington, Vt.

Dean vowed to press on, staking his candidacy on a victory in Wisconsin’s primary on Feb. 17.

Kerry, a fourth-term senator from Massachusetts, improved his winning record to nine of 11 nominating contests. He finished far ahead of not only Dean but two other major candidates, Sen. John Edwards and retired Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark. Edwards and Clark effectively ceded Michigan and Washington to focus on contests in Tennessee and Virginia on Tuesday.

After scooping up the bulk of 204 delegates at stake Saturday, further padding his advantage over all remaining rivals, Kerry trained his sights on President Bush.

“This week George Bush and the Republican smear machine has begun to trot out the same old lines of attack,” Kerry said at a Democratic Party dinner in Richmond, Va., where several presidential hopefuls converged Saturday night.

“They’ve used this to divide us before, and I have news this time

Kerry is expected to score another win today in the Maine caucuses.

Dean finished a distant second in both Michigan and Washington state. In a statement released Saturday night, he focused on the Washington results, where his 30% showing was his best of the primary season.

“The people of Washington state have sent a clear message they want this race and this debate to continue, and that our campaign is the real alternative to John Kerry,” Dean said.

Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio finished third in Washington, followed by Edwards, a first-term senator from North Carolina, and Clark, of Arkansas.

In Michigan, Edwards finished third, followed by Clark and the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York.

Even before the caucus votes were counted, Kerry claimed victory Saturday in what seemed a rare show of confidence. Later, he explained that his advance text for the Virginia dinner had been released to reporters prematurely.

“As we gather here tonight, a great message is being sent across this country, from Michigan, Washington state -- the same message that was sent in Iowa and New Hampshire and Missouri and other states across this country,” Kerry told an exuberant audience of nearly 2,000 Democratic loyalists packed into a convention center ballroom.

“And that is the same message that I am carrying to Virginia and Tennessee and to the rest of this country. And that message is: George Bush’s days are numbered and change is on the way.”

The results underscored the huge wave of momentum Kerry has built since winning the leadoff contests in Iowa and New Hampshire in January. For months, Dean was seen as the front-runner in Washington state and Michigan, which both seemed tailor-made for his grass-roots, insurgent campaign.

A hotbed of opposition to the war in Iraq, Washington state boasts a progressive streak and a degree of high-tech sophistication that makes it among the most plugged-in places in the country. Dean was the only candidate to advertise on television in Washington state, spending $150,000 on ads in the Seattle area.

But that was last summer, when Dean was capable of drawing thousands of people to his rallies. He left the state Wednesday after a considerably more modest rally in Seattle and never returned.

Michigan was another place that once held great promise for Dean. New rules allowed balloting via the Internet, and the candidate made a big, early push in the state, counting on strong support online.

Instead, Kerry rolled up a crushing victory, winning 52% of the vote to Dean’s 17%. Kerry did nearly as well in Washington state, finishing with just under 50% of the vote, nearly 20 points better than Dean.

On top of those losses, Dean got further bad news over lunch with McEntee, the head of AFSCME, who informed him of the highly unusual decision to pull the union’s endorsement.

The union’s backing had been crucial to Dean’s emergence as the race’s front-runner last fall. And two weeks ago, McEntee had been exhorting his green-shirted workers in New Hampshire to help get out the vote for Dean.

Things abruptly changed when Dean failed to win any of the first nine contests. McEntee “was concerned with the direction of the campaign,” a Dean aide said after Saturday’s gathering. McEntee could not be reached for comment.

Also at the lunch was Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which in mid-November joined with AFSCME in backing Dean. James A. Williams, president of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, another labor group supporting Dean, joined the discussion by telephone.

Afterward, Stern and Williams indicated they were sticking with Dean, at least until the Wisconsin vote.

After digesting the bad news, the Dean family suffered another loss. The candidate looked on as his son’s Burlington High School hockey team was crushed by nearby Essex High School, 5-1.

Kerry spent much of Saturday casting himself as the candidate of mainstream America and portraying the Bush administration as out of touch with the middle class as it pursues a stridently conservative agenda.

Starting with a rally at Belmont University in snowy Nashville, Kerry used some of his harshest language yet in the campaign to describe the administration: “This is the most nonsense, lack-of-common-sense, selfish, unbelievably self-involved group I’ve ever seen in my life.”

He responded obliquely to criticism that he is too liberal to do well in the South in the general election, as well as to comments by Republican Party Chairman Ed Gillespie that he is even more liberal than fellow Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

“This administration is busy trying to paint everybody else as out of touch, out of sync, somehow not in the mainstream,” he told the crowd of several hundred.

“Well, let me tell you something. I’m not worried about coming down South and talking to people about jobs, schools and healthcare and the environment. I think it’s them who ought to worry about coming down here and talking to people.”

Elsewhere Saturday, Edwards picked up his first big labor endorsement of the presidential contest, winning the backing of UNITE, the needle-trades union.

He used the occasion to lash out against the Bush administration’s trade and economic policies before a raucous crowd of more than 450 people at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

“We know that this president is at war with working people, every single day making their lives harder, making it more and more difficult every day for working people to have a voice,” Edwards said.

He repeated his vow to run a more labor-friendly White House, promising among other things to ban the hiring of permanent replacements for strikers.

Afterward, Edwards declined to be drawn out by reporters asking for reaction to another round of attacks from Clark on his Senate voting record, stepping back from the call-and-response that has marked the past couple of days.

“I’m just going to stay focused on the positive message that has worked everywhere in the country,” Edwards said, before flying to Virginia for Saturday night’s Democratic gathering. “I’m going to continue to do what I’ve done all along.”

At the fundraising dinner, Kerry received the most enthusiastic applause, but Sharpton drew several standing ovations for his fiery rhetoric.

After spending the past several days lighting into Kerry and Edwards, Clark devoted most of his dinner speech to an attack on Bush and the Republican Party. He did, however, work in a glancing reference to his two senatorial rivals.

“I’m not a Washington insider. I’m a Washington outsider,” said Clark, who is making his first run for public office. “While others have been talking and debating, I’ve been deciding and doing.”

Edwards played on regional pride by striking a note of Southern defiance.

“Folks in the South, they’re tired of Republicans taking the South for granted,” the South Carolina native said. “They’re tired of Democrats ignoring the South. What they want is somebody to fight for them.”

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Delegate count

Here is the current breakdown of presidential preferences of delegates to the Democratic National Convention. It includes choices by ‘super delegates,’ those not picked through primaries or caucuses and who can change their minds.

Needed to nominate: 2,161

*--* Candidate Pledged delegates John F. Kerry 411 Howard Dean 175 John Edwards 116 Wesley K. Clark 82 Al Sharpton 12 Dennis J. Kucinich 2

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Source: Associated Press

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Times staff writers John M. Glionna, Scott Martelle, James Rainey and Eric Slater contributed to this report.