Dean Leaves It to Kerry, Edwards

Howard Dean gave up his insurgent campaign for the presidency Wednesday, essentially reducing the race for the Democratic nomination to a two-man contest that could be decided in a coast-to-coast struggle into early March.

The showdown between Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina was fully joined, with Edwards moving aggressively to position himself as the pro-worker, tough-on-trade alternative and Kerry saying he had the experience needed to offer the strongest challenge to President Bush.

Edwards said Wednesday he opposed not just the North American Free Trade Agreement, but at least three other trade treaties that Kerry backed, an expansion of arguments that helped him take second in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary.

Kerry insisted his stances on trade were not so different from Edwards’, with both calling for higher environmental and labor standards for U.S. trading partners. And Kerry, who attended exclusive prep schools, went to lengths at campaign stops in Ohio to say he has just as much empathy for the dispossessed as Edwards, who repeatedly invokes his youth in the poor textile mill towns of the South.

“I think that all of us who have been sensitive to life and to people and to problems share an understanding of what it means to somebody to lose their job,” Kerry said. “If where you come from was a qualification for being president, we’d have never had Franklin Roosevelt or John Kennedy.”

Kerry and Edwards’ positions atop the field may have been undisputed but Dean remained, on his final day in the race, the campaign’s chief provocateur. The former Vermont governor left the race, but with a caveat.

“I am no longer actively pursuing the presidency,” the onetime front-runner told hundreds of emotional supporters jammed into a hotel ballroom in his hometown of Burlington, Vt.

But he added that his backers could still vote for him in upcoming primaries, including the March 2 contests in California and nine other states. Dean said those votes would translate into convention delegates that would help him mold the platform of whichever nominee emerges from the Democratic National Convention this July.

“We are on the ballots,” Dean said, as his wife, Judy, stood behind him, smiling and clapping. “Use your networks to send progressive delegates to the convention in Boston. We are not going away. We are staying together unified, all of us.”

Aides suggested that Dean, who raised a Democratic record $50.3 million, mostly in donations of less than $100, might push for the party nominee to embrace his proposal for a $250 limit on individual campaign contributions.

But Dean’s goals for the near future remained in the formative stages Wednesday. What seemed certain was that the physician-turned-politician would try to maintain his sway over his supporters, including the 640,000 people on his campaign’s e-mail list, to help defeat Bush and, perhaps, to raise money for other Democrats.

Dean gave no indication that he would endorse either Kerry or Edwards. He has been relatively friendly with Edwards on the stump, but has feuded openly with Kerry, calling him a “Washington insider.”

No barbs, however, could diminish Kerry’s advantages in what could be the climactic weeks of the campaign.

He has more than three times as many convention delegates as Edwards, with 608 of the 2,162 needed to win the nomination. He increasingly is winning the backing of Democratic power brokers -- today he will be endorsed by the AFL-CIO. And he has the continuing bounce of a winner, having won 15 of the 17 nominating contests thus far.

Still, the Edwards camp was boosted by his finish six percentage points behind Kerry in Tuesday’s Wisconsin primary. And Kerry’s behavior Wednesday suggested that his opponent was very much on his mind.

The 19-year Senate veteran sought to minimize his differences with his younger colleague, who has been in the Senate less than one term.

During a town hall meeting at a United Auto Workers hall in Dayton, Ohio, where the unemployment rate is 26%, Kerry communed with men and women who worked at an auto parts plant that has lost many jobs over the last three years.

“As you walk down the street here, you can just feel the pain and the anxiety,” Kerry said, “the way in which the heart has been ripped out of the heartland by an economic policy that does not remain connected to the real lives of real people in this country.”

He also talked about the scourge of “jacked-up price deals” by pharmaceutical companies and the plight of schools that are “just plain stuck” because of shrinking property taxes. Kerry promised he would give American workers “the fairest shake they’ve had in years.”

Edwards held a fundraiser in New York City on Wednesday and is to campaign today at Columbia University in Manhattan.

He is then scheduled to travel to Atlanta and Savannah, Ga.; Largo, Md.; Albany and Buffalo, N.Y.; and Minneapolis -- his most intensive national fly-around so far this year.

In a conference call while riding the train from Washington to New York, Edwards urged Kerry to make himself available to more debates. He declined to say whether long-shot candidates the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio should be included.

His emphasis on a face-to-face showdown with the front-runner has some urgency, since he remains less known to most Americans, according to polls.

Campaign analysts said Edwards faced at least one other obstacle in trying to add to his lone primary victory thus far, on Feb. 7 in his native South Carolina: Many of the Super Tuesday primaries, including New York’s, do not allow voting by the political independents, who have tilted toward Edwards.

That will mean Edwards will have to win more votes from core Democrats, said Costas Panagopolous, executive director of New York University’s campaign management program.

Both Kerry and Edwards may be stymied in the next two weeks by money problems. Both are reportedly so low on funds that they will be able to air television ads sporadically, at best.

“Fortunately for Edwards, the free media he’s getting coming out of Wisconsin ... is going to leave voters in these key Super Tuesday primary states with a favorable view of his candidacy, and his electability,” Panagopolous said.

Both Edwards and Kerry went begging in their hopes of attracting support from Dean followers. Prominent Democrats like Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin signaled that they were likely to wait for a presumptive nominee, rather than choose between the two front-runners.

And the leader of the Service Employees International Union, Dean’s most significant labor supporter, vowed to wait a week to let members decide whether to shift their endorsement.

That left a question mark hanging over Dean himself, and aides said that any endorsement from him won’t come quickly.

Dean sounded calm and resolute for most of his 25-minute speech Wednesday, while many of his aides wiped away tears. As he finished his address, his face flushed with emotion and his voice cracked.

“We still believe, Howard!” one woman shouted from the audience.

The candidate responded with a favorite message from his long months on the stump: “Believe in yourselves.”

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Times staff writers Nick Anderson, Scott Martelle, Eric Slater and Matea Gold contributed to this report.

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Delegate count

Here is the 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: 2,162

Candidate: Delegates

John F. Kerry: 613

Howard Dean: 202

John Edwards: 192

Al Sharpton: 16

Dennis J. Kucinich: 2

Source: Associated Press

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