Kerry rivals switch focus for Tuesday
Target specific primary states
GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Concerned with Senator John F. Kerry's growing momentum, the other Democratic contenders for president have abandoned any pretense of running coast-to-coast campaigns. They have instead targeted specific states in an unusually selective strategy that feels as much like a general election as it does a primary.
Senator John Edwards is pinning his entire candidacy on winning the South Carolina primary on Tuesday, hoping a Southern triumph will catapult him ahead in his next two target states, Virginia and Tennessee.
In a similar strategy, retired General Wesley K. Clark is banking on a victory in Oklahoma, where he has deployed at least 50 staff members, and strong showings in New Mexico and Arizona to fuel his campaign along a path through the South and Midwest.
Howard Dean, his coffers drained by $35 million, has lowered expectations that he could win any of the contests on Feb. 3.
Dean is aiming instead for the large clusters of delegates in Michigan, Washington, and Wisconsin. He is not running advertisements, the measure of whether a campaign is competing in a given area, in those states, saving resources in the hope that his opponents will run out of cash. Even Kerry, facing a 20-state crunch between Feb. 4 and March 2, is being selective.
Kerry is making a comparatively modest investment in South Carolina while adding, just yesterday, six new field organizers in Maine.
"No campaign will have the money to run a full-fledged effort in all 20 states" that hold primary contests up through Super Tuesday, senior Dean strategist Steve McMahon said. "Everyone will need to pick their targets."
Gambling on one state at the expense of others is a tactic that has had mixed results so far: Kerry, after taking a nosedive in New Hampshire polls, turned his attention to Iowa and won, giving him a tremendous push into the next race.
But Senator Joseph I. Lieberman and Clark, both of whom skipped Iowa to make New Hampshire their springboard, did not see any solid returns. Now the challenge is far greater, with contests in much more expensive media markets spread out across thousands of miles and three time zones.
"They've got finite resources," said Mike Feldman, a Democratic strategist who worked for former Vice President Al Gore. "They have to pick and choose places; even the front-runner has to do that, and if the front-runner has to do it, then everyone else really needs to. And the question for everyone else is: Can this person possibly pull it off?"
Polling data suggest it will be an uphill battle for most of the underdogs to topple Kerry in most of the states where votes are set for Feb. 3 and beyond. In South Carolina, Edwards leads Kerry by as many as 10 points or as few as one, depending on the survey. A CBS News poll, conducted Jan. 28 and Jan. 29, suggested Edwards had 30 percent of the vote, followed by 18 percent for Kerry. Clark and the Rev. Al Sharpton were tied at 11 percent. Dean registered at 10 percent, and Lieberman three. The poll had a margin of error of five percentage points.
Edwards, who also has offices and staff in Missouri, Oklahoma, and New Mexico, is estimated to have spent half of his $500,000 advertising budget on South Carolina, signaling how serious he is about the state.
If Edwards were to win there, he would jump to Virginia and Tennessee, where he already has staff in place.
The race is much closer elsewhere: In Arizona, where everyone except Dean and Edwards is running ads, a recent Zogby poll gave Kerry 38 percent, followed by Clark at 17 percent and Dean at 12 percent.
In Delaware, a state in which Lieberman has campaigned frequently, and for which he and Kerry have purchased ads, Kerry leads the pack, with 27 percent, according to an American Research Group survey conducted Jan. 28 and Jan. 29. Lieberman came in second, at 16 percent, followed by Dean, at 14 percent.
There have been no recent polls in New Mexico, but several candidates think they have a shot there and are spending tens of thousands of dollars on ads.
Clark had been solidly ahead in Oklahoma, but a survey taken by Insider Advantage after Kerry won the New Hampshire primary suggested that the Massachusetts senator would win, with 26 percent of the vote, compared with 17 percent for Clark and 14 percent for Edwards.
A Zogby poll, taken about the same time, still gave Clark a substantial lead over Kerry, 27 to 19, with Edwards close behind at 17 percent.
Of all the candidates, Dean has most drastically revised his game plan, though the others have made adjustments. Almost no one predicted that Kerry would win the Iowa caucuses or Edwards would come in second.
Roy Neel, who replaced Joe Trippi as the manager of the Dean campaign, issued a memo to supporters and the media Friday outlining their strategy -- a risky, counterintuitive bet that Dean can win delegate-heavy states in later weeks despite his stalled momentum early on.
"Has such a strategy ever worked before?" Neel asked rhetorically, and then he answered, "No; it's never been tried."
Dramatically downplaying expectations for his performance Feb. 3, Dean is targeting Michigan and Washington, whose contests are held Feb. 7.
Added together, the two Feb. 7 states hold the promise of 204 delegates to the Democratic convention in Boston this summer, compared with 269 delegates in the seven Feb. 3 states. Even Dean's opponents admitted it would be possible for the former Vermont governor to catch up to Kerry later this month.
"The media and the party insiders will attempt to declare Kerry the winner on Feb. 3 after fewer than 10 percent of the state delegates have been chosen," Neel wrote in his memo.
"At that point Kerry himself will probably have claimed fewer than one-third of the delegates he needs to win. They would like the campaign to be over before the voters of California, New York, Texas, and nearly every other
big state have spoken," Neel wrote.Indeed, a late win in California and New York on March 2 would help Dean skyrocket: California has 370 delegates, while New York has 236.
Between campaign stops yesterday, Dean said: "We're going to get plenty of delegates on Feb. 3, and we're going to get some more delegates in Michigan, Washington, and Maine. And the key in this race, as you well know, is to have the most delegates when you get to Boston on July 25th, and that's what we intend to do."
Clark's campaign has long pointed to Feb. 3 as a crucial date for his campaign, with several states in the South and Southwest weighing in. South Carolina was once a priority for him, but with poll numbers showing a win apparently out of reach there, the campaign has sought to deemphasize the importance of that state.
Instead, Clark is essentially running a three-state campaign, concentrating his campaign efforts on three Feb. 3 states -- Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona. He is also keeping resources trained on three states that vote later in February: Virginia, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, where Clark has run advertising since Thanksgiving, his advisers said.
The campaign has purchased "saturation level" television advertising in those six states, in addition to the Feb. 3 states of South Carolina and North Dakota. His advertising budget is estimated at $1.6 million, heftier than his rivals', which he has used in part to blanket the Southern states with direct-mail fliers and automated telephone calls asking voters to support him.
"They're states where we have a solid beachhead," Chris Lehane said. "His profile works very well there. They're also states that connect with the outsider message and leadership message."
Glen Johnson, traveling with Dean in Arizona, contributed to this report. Klein, traveling with Clark, reported from New Mexico. Anne E. Kornblut, who reported from South Carolina, can be reached at akornblut@globe.com. 