PRESIDENTIAL RACE With a solid lead, Kerry has edge in Virginia, Dem activists say

At a Kerry rally in Richmond, Va., some voters said they also like Edwards.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
RICHMOND, Va. -- Democratic front-runner John Kerry has a good chance to win his first Southern state in the Virginia primary Tuesday, a potentially crippling blow to the candidacies of John Edwards and Wesley Clark, who rely on Southern support.
Party activists say Kerry has the apparent edge in Virginia, and two recent polls show the Massachusetts senator with a solid lead over Edwards. On Sunday, Kerry received the endorsement of Gov. Mark Warner, who's popular with state Democrats.
Kerry's three-state weekend rout, capped by his coast to victory in Maine, pushed him closer to the Democratic nomination and left his rivals scrambling to find a way to stop the front-runner.
Neither Edwards nor Clark -- nor one-time front-runner Howard Dean -- could match Kerry's advantage in Maine, which held its caucuses Sunday with 24 delegates at stake.
Topped Dean, Kucinich
Kerry outpaced Dean by a nearly 2-to-1 margin in the state, with Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio a distant third. Dean and Kucinich had made 11th-hour appeals to Maine voters. The win there came after Kerry's triumphs in Michigan and Washington state a day earlier.
Kerry has more than twice as many delegates as his closest pursuer, as his win in Maine pushed his total to 426, compared with Dean's 184, according to an Associated Press tally. It takes 2,162 delegates to win the nomination. Kucinich appeared to fall just short of qualifying for delegates in Maine.
With 82 delegates at stake, Virginia is the second-biggest prize this month after Michigan. And Virginia and Tennessee, with 69 delegates up for grabs Tuesday, also are close to must-win states for Edwards and Clark, who claim they could take Southern states away from President Bush.
"Edwards needs one of these two states, if not both, or that undercuts his whole rationale for running," said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
Edwards, who has insisted that he would not accept an invitation run as a Democratic vice-presidential running mate in the fall, appeared to crack that door open a bit Sunday.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Edwards repeated his stance that there were no circumstances under which he would campaign as vice president. But then he hedged.
"Here's the problem with the question," the North Carolina senator said. "You don't know what's going to happen a month, three months, six months from now. As I sit here today, I intend to fight with everything I've got to be the nominee."
His spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri said later that the remark did not signal a change, and that Edwards continues to believe he will face off against President Bush in November.
Sunday morning, Kerry and Warner attended church in Richmond at New Deliverance Evangelist Church, where Kerry invoked Martin Luther King Jr., quoted Scripture and swayed to the rhythms of tambourines, bongos, piano and bass.
Attack on Bush
Earlier, in one of his sharpest attacks of the campaign, he accused Bush of misleading the American public on the war in Iraq and the size of the federal deficit.
Kerry ended his day in Chesapeake, in Virginia's conservative tidewater region. More than 800 people crowded into the gym of the Oscar E. Smith High School to hear Kerry express his kinship with the people of the Norfolk area, home of the biggest U.S. naval base on the Atlantic.
"This is part of the country that is close to my heart because I'm a Navy man through and through," said Kerry, who skippered a Navy Swift boat in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War.
Kerry, Edwards and Clark campaigned across the state during the weekend, added TV spots and spoke to an overflow crowd of 2,000 Democrats at the party's annual dinner in Richmond. The party faithful are reveling in a rare primary that is important and, they say, offers good choices.
"I haven't seen this much excitement among Democrats since the 1960s," said Amanda Macaulay, 63, of Richmond at a Kerry rally. She said she was leaning toward Kerry but also liked Edwards, a sentiment heard often at the dinner.
A direct pitch
Edwards made the most direct, impassioned pitch to Southerners, including black voters, saying that as a North Carolinian, he felt a "special responsibility" on race relations. His speech drew several ovations and raves from state Democrats.
During a two-day bus tour of the state, Clark stressed his small-town roots in Arkansas, his faith and his long Army career.
But Clark is running third in the polls, and one of his backers, Pat Hudson of Richmond, said: "I'm just afraid we're running out of time."