Edwards: ‘I Don’t Intend ... to Lose’

Sen. John Edwards stood at a red wooden podium in an overcrowded social hall Friday and reduced his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination to something people here know well: football.

Edwards’ home team, the Carolina Panthers, lost the Feb. 2 Super Bowl to the New England Patriots -- a point this senator from North Carolina hasn’t quite gotten over yet.

“I’ll tell you one thing I don’t intend to do, which is to lose another battle to someone from Massachusetts,” Edwards said to cheers.

It was a rare reference to front-runner Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts in a campaign day that took Edwards from Savannah, Ga., through suburban Washington, D.C., to this struggling Rust Belt city in western New York.

At each stop, Edwards hammered on his core argument -- that Bush’s policies have exacerbated a class divide.

While trying to catch Kerry for the nomination, Edwards made it clear that his ultimate target is Bush.

“All these reporters are always asking, ‘When are you going on the attack? How are you going to be successful if you don’t attack?’ ” he said, gesturing to a row of television cameras.

“Let me be very direct.... That’s not me. I believe this election is bigger than that,” he said.

At the start of the day, Edwards faxed an invitation to Kerry to meet in at least four debates before March 2, when California and nine other states hold primaries or caucuses.

The two candidates have agreed to a debate in Los Angeles Thursday, sponsored by the Los Angeles Times and CNN, which is to include the Rev. Al Sharpton of New York and Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio.

Edwards urged Kerry to agree to three more four-way debates to “give people in places like New York and Ohio the chance to see where we stand on the issues.”

The Kerry campaign did not commit to any additional debates before March 2.

“We’re not sure what John Edwards is going to say now that he hasn’t had the opportunity to say in the last 18 debates over the last 10 months, including just last week in Wisconsin,” said Kerry spokesman David Wade.

Wade said Kerry preferred to spend the next 10 days crisscrossing the nation, talking and listening to as many voters as possible.

In a further sign that the campaign has gelled into a two-candidate race, aides to Kerry and Edwards said both had been notified they would receive Secret Service protection, at dates still under discussion.

Though Kerry was out of sight Friday, Edwards stayed visible, hitting three states in less than 12 hours.

Throughout the day, he sought to link local economic problems to national policies. He contended that the persistent recession in western New York stemmed from a failed Republican agenda.

In Georgia, the theme was trade. In Maryland, Edwards trotted out his agenda for supporting small and minority-owned businesses through a federal venture-capital fund, a 10% tax cut for small businesses that manufacture goods in the U.S., and cutting healthcare costs by allowing small businesses to join insurance pools.

In Savannah, Edwards said the problem with White House policies was a close relationship between the Bush administration and corporate America.

“These are the people who have given millions of dollars to this president’s campaign,” Edwards said. “And what’s happening is we have some Americans making millions of dollars shipping the jobs of other Americans overseas.”

He began the day by reading from notes, which drained some of the energy from his usually charged delivery.

As he shifted into the core of his stump speech, Edwards spoke from memory -- and with more effect.

“The American people deserve a president who understands their lives; who knows what it’s like to work for a living; who knows the struggles middle-class working families, those who live in poverty, go through every day,” Edwards said in Maryland, adding that he would be an advocate for the poor.

“It comes from in here,” he said, pointing to his chest. “It is a part of who I am.”

Although Edwards has downplayed the state’s importance to his campaign, analysts say he must win in Georgia.

With former Gen. Wesley K. Clark out of the race and little support for Sharpton, Edwards is under greater pressure now to show he can deliver the South to the Democrats, particularly when his main competitor is a senator from Massachusetts.

Boo Hornstein, a sociology professor at Savannah’s Saint Leo University, stood on the sun-dappled square and absorbed Edwards’ talk.

Hornstein was leaning toward Kerry when he arrived and left the same way, but said he planned to do more research on Edwards’ positions.

He liked Edwards’ speech, he said, but he likes Kerry’s toughness, too.

“I think Kerry could slug it out with Bush,” Hornstein said, “and it’s going to take a lot of slugging” to win.

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Times staff writer Maria L. La Ganga contributed to this report.