Kerry hunts for votes in South, rivals scramble

Democratic front-runner John Kerry hunted for votes yesterday in Virginia and Tennessee on the eve of their primaries, pushing for his first win in the South as his rivals scrambled to stay alive and slow his march to the nomination.

After sweeping contests in three states over the weekend, Kerry ignored his rivals and focused on President George W. Bush's economic leadership, ridiculing a new White House report predicting the creation of 2.6 million new jobs this year.

"I've got a feeling this report was prepared by the same people who brought us the intelligence on Iraq," Kerry told a crowd in Roanoke, Virginia, noting the US economy has lost more than two million jobs under Bush.

"I don't think we need a new report about jobs in America. I think we need a new president who's going to create jobs in America and put America back to work," said Mr Kerry, who won easily in Michigan, Washington and Maine over the weekend to take another big step toward being the candidate to face Mr Bush in November.

Mr Kerry, a senator from Massachusetts, leads in public opinion polls in Virginia and Tennessee ahead of the primaries in those two states today. A win in either state would help dispel doubts about Mr Kerry's appeal in the South, a crucial battleground in November's general election.

A sweep of both would also be a severe blow to his two Southern rivals, North Carolina Senator John Edwards and retired General Wesley Clark of Arkansas, who pushed their own job creation plans as they frantically hunted for enough votes to keep their candidacies alive.

Mr Edwards, who beat Mr Kerry in South Carolina last week, met with workers losing their jobs at an air conditioning plant in Morrison, Tennessee. He pushed his economic revival plan to provide seed money for struggling communities and tax breaks for companies that keep jobs from moving to foreign countries.

"I do understand what you're going through and you have my commitment that I will do everything in my power to protect your jobs, to replace your jobs that are being lost and help you in the interim," said Mr Edwards, a trial lawyer before he was elected to the Senate in 1998.

Clark, campaigning in Union City, Tennessee, criticised trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement that he said have cost Americans jobs, and drew distinctions between himself and his two top rivals in the South.

"You've got a front-runner, a lawyer and an underdog. I'm the underdog," said Mr Clark, who described himself as someone "who has spent his life out there rolling up his sleeves, working with people, building teams, being held accountable and making it happen."

Former front-runner Howard Dean looked beyond Virginia and Tennessee to concentrate on his do-or-die stand in Wisconsin, which holds a February 17 primary that could be the climactic showdown between Mr Kerry and any rival left standing.

The former Vermont governor told voters in Madison, Wisconsin, that they had the power to "keep this debate alive" and nominate someone who can stand up to Mr Bush.

"The way to beat George W. Bush is with a candidate who already has stood up to him... on issues that mattered - like health care, investing in our children, the national debt and the Iraq war," said Mr Dean, who built his lead in the polls last year with blunt criticism of Mr Bush and the Iraq war.

Mr Dean's candidacy has collapsed this year as Democratic voters re-evaluated the field and decided Mr Kerry had the best chance to unseat Mr Bush. But Mr Dean pointed out that Mr Kerry, who has been critical of the conduct of the war in Iraq, voted to authorise the military mission.

"George Bush embarked on a unilateral, preemptive, wrongheaded war in Iraq," Mr Dean said. "He misled us about the facts. Washington Democrats looked at the polls and went along... I stood up and said it was the wrong war at the wrong time."