PRESIDENTIAL RACE Sen. Kerry extends his lead

ASSOCIATED PRESS
John Kerry's chief rivals campaigned on the strength of their Southern roots today, all but ceding Democratic presidential nomination contests in Michigan and Washington state in favor of a showdown closer to home.
Kerry easily prevailed in five states among the seven that voted Tuesday in primaries and caucuses, piling delegates into his column at twice the rate of his nearest opponent and making it ever harder for his challengers to see any way to stop him.
North Carolina Sen. John Edwards said today his strong second-place finish in Oklahoma showed he's a national candidate, even if he will have to wait a while to score a breakout win outside the South.
"We're running a very national campaign," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America." "We're getting a great response to this positive message about making the country work for everybody."
Edwards won in South Carolina, the state of his birth, while Wesley Clark edged him in Oklahoma -- victories that both candidates needed to keep going. Kerry won in Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota, Missouri and Delaware, all by large margins, in the first national test of the Democrats running for the nomination.
The series drove Joe Lieberman, the vice presidential candidate of 2000, from the race, and imperiled the candidacy of one-time sensation Howard Dean, who set low expectations for the night and did not exceed them.
Gaining momentum
"Now we will carry this campaign and the cause of a stronger, fairer, more prosperous America to every part of America," Kerry said.
Organized labor took note of Kerry's tightening grip on front-runner status as the 1.3 million-member American Federation of Teachers endorsed the Massachusetts senator today, praising him not only for his record on education but his understanding of national security.
His rivals were running short on the treasure and time to mount that sort of national battle.
Clark, a retired general billing himself as an "old soldier from Arkansas," had a full day of events in neighboring Tennessee, and aides said he was scaling back plans to campaign in Virginia. Those states vote Tuesday, after weekend contests in Michigan, Washington and Maine.
Edwards was competing in Tennessee and Virginia and started airing TV ads at moderate levels in three media markets in each state today. However, he is not running ads in the ultra-expensive Washington, D.C., market that reaches into heavily Democratic northern Virginia. Edwards also has set his sights on the Feb. 17 primary in Wisconsin to show he can win outside his region.
In their advertising campaigns and their rhetoric, Edwards and Clark were skipping over the Saturday battles in Michigan and Washington. "I think that Tennessee and Virginia ... come next," Edwards said.
Dean trailed in the seven-state series and was campaigning in Washington. Aides said his strategy rested on a revival in Wisconsin.
There was no denying Kerry the "Big Mo," as Clark put it Tuesday.
"This could be over; it could be a long way from over," Clark said, "and it could be impacted tomorrow by something we don't know about."
Kerry coasted to victory in the five states he won -- Arizona, Delaware, Missouri, New Mexico and North Dakota -- in the first broadly based round of voting in the Democratic primary season.
Delegates
Of the 269 pledged delegates at stake Tuesday night, an AP analysis showed Kerry winning 128; Edwards, 61; Clark, 49; Dean, seven; and Al Sharpton, one. Twenty-three delegates are yet to be allocated. Dennis Kucinich got none.
Kerry won the two states with the most delegates, Missouri and Arizona, while Clark and Edwards divided the next two biggest prizes.
The results pushed Kerry to nearly 250 of the 2,162 delegates needed for the nomination, including the superdelegates of lawmakers and party traditionalists. Each of his rivals had less than half that number.
Kerry demonstrated his strength across the range of Democratic voters, winning big among Hispanics in Arizona and all racial and income groups in Missouri, where he piled up a nearly 2-to-1 win over his nearest rival, Edwards.
Voters surveyed as they left polling places liked the four-term Massachusetts senator for the same reasons mentioned by the Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire who sent him bursting out of the starting gate. They cited his experience and said he seemed most able to beat President Bush.
Kerry got at least half the vote in Missouri, North Dakota and Delaware, and won by about 15 percentage points in Arizona and New Mexico.
Dropped out
Lieberman, a moderate Connecticut senator whose support for the Iraq war stood out in a Democratic field of war critics, had pinned his last hopes on winning Delaware, where he finished with 11 percent of the vote, a distant second with just a handful of votes ahead of Edwards and Dean.
"The judgment of the voters is now clear," Lieberman said. "For me, it is now time to make a difficult but realistic decision. I have decided tonight to end my quest for the presidency of the United States of America."
He was the fourth to drop out.
Steve Murphy, former campaign manager for Missouri Rep. Dick Gephardt, who quit after the Iowa caucuses, said the race for the nomination was all but settled in his view.
"The only question is who is going to be the last man standing" against Kerry, he said.
Edwards and Clark had hoped to make progress on that question, at least, but it was left unsettled by the split decision in the two states not won by Kerry.
Clark had spent $11 million on TV ads in trying to climb out of the pack; Edwards fell just short in Oklahoma of showing he could win outside the South, trailing Clark by less than 1,000 votes.
Dean saved his money for a last stand in Wisconsin, a long-shot strategy that some of his own advisers questioned. He promised supporters he'd keep "going and going and going."