Race moves on to Mich., Wash.

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. -- The race for the Democratic presidential nomination shifts next to delegate-rich Michigan and Washington, where Howard Dean will be back in the ring and fighting to recapture the support and momentum he has lost in both states to John F. Kerry.

In advance of Saturday's Democratic caucuses, Dean and Kerry campaigned in Washington yesterday, and both scheduled trips to Michigan later this week. Dean will travel from eastern to western Michigan tomorrow and Friday, and Kerry will hopscotch Friday from a meeting with black ministers in Detroit to a veterans' rally in Warren to an event in Flint focused on Michigan's 7.2 percent unemployment rate.

After his victory in South Carolina last night, John Edwards said on CNN that "I expect to compete very hard in Michigan," and a spokesman said the campaign was looking into running ads in the state.

Big caches of delegates are at stake -- 128 Michigan and 76 in Washington -- but the presidential campaigns haven't caught fire in either state. The airways in both states have been ad-free, and candidate sightings have been few or absent as Kerry, Edwards, Wesley K. Clark, and Joseph I. Lieberman focused on contests in seven states yesterday and Dean husbanded his resources.

"We need to win Washington," Dean said yesterday at a rally in Spokane, where last August he and his antiwar campaign drew 1,000 people to a 9 a.m. town hall meeting.

A Detroit News poll of 300 likely Michigan voters conducted Sunday and Monday showed Kerry leading Dean 56 percent to 14 percent, with Edwards at 6 percent and Clark at 3 percent.

The poll had a 6 percent margin of error, and campaign aides warned it might not be a true reflection of voters who will show up at one of 590 caucus sites Saturday.

Kerry spokesman Mark Kornblau said the campaign was "encouraged" by the poll numbers but not complacent. "We think we're in a tough fight," Kornblau said. "Michigan is known for its independent streak."

Indeed, it is a state where Democratic primary voters chose Governor George Wallace of Alabama in the 1972 primary and where the Rev. Jesse Jackson came in first in the 1988 Democratic caucuses. The underdog sentiment also has been strong in Republican primaries here: Ross Perot won in 1992, and Senator John McCain prevailed over George W. Bush in 2000.

But it's clear that Kerry's victories in Iowa and New Hampshire and his endorsement from Jennifer Granholm, the state's popular governor, and other elected officials have dampened early enthusiasm among Michigan Democrats for Dean, who set up a big organization early and hoped his outsider message would resonate more than Richard A. Gephardt's appeal to union households.

"Kerry has the experience that Dean and Edwards don't have, and I am persuaded that on the critical issues, he gets it," said US Representative Sander Levin, who last week endorsed Kerry. "We have to win the White House, and John Kerry is the strongest candidate to do that."

Kerry has not been in Michigan since a candidate debate in October, but Dean was in Roseville, a Detroit suburb, on Sunday, promising to protect and restore jobs in a state where 175,000 factory workers have been displaced since 2000.

"The economy has decimated our state. Everyone in Michigan knows someone who has lost a job in manufacturing, and some individuals have worked in more than one plant that has closed," said Mark Gaffney, president of the Michigan AFL-CIO, with 1 million active and retired members in the state. The AFL-CIO has not endorsed a candidate, but Gaffney has already cast his vote via the Internet for Edwards.

Dean's grass-roots organization and get-out-the-vote effort is bolstered in Michigan by ground troops from the painters union, the American Federation of State and Municipal Workers, and the Service Employees International Union. Kerry has been endorsed by the Michigan Education Association, the Communications Workers of America, and the firefighters union.

Clark has 10 staffers in Michigan who are focusing on turning out the vote among Detroit's large Arab-American and Albanian communities and spreading the Clark message to the more conservative cities in western Michigan. Clark intends to campaign in Michigan tomorrow and Friday, said Jonathan Beeton, his state spokesman.

Democratic Party officials in Michigan expect about 100,000 people to participate in Saturday's caucuses. Democrats can either vote at the caucus site or have already applied for a ballot in advance and cast it either by mail or Internet. So far, about 20,000 ballots have been received.

Daren Berringer, Dean's Michigan director, says the caucuses "play to the advantage" of the candidate with the strongest ground game. Dean's headquarters in Livonia are humming with activity, as volunteers run phone banks and check lists for the most likely voters.

"Senator Kerry is the front-runner, but we're outworking his campaign," Berringer said. "When voters walk into the polls Saturday, they are going to ask themselves if they're voting for the media-hyped candidate, or one who reached out to them and told them why he was the better candidate."

Arlene Frank, director of the Womencenter at Oakland Community College in Farmington Hills, said she plans to vote online but not until she has studied Dean, Edwards, and Kerry on the issues she cares about, which are the war in Iraq, gun control, and abortion rights.

"There is a huge amount of pressure to choose someone who can win, and it is very important to me to beat President Bush," Frank said. "So it's a dilemma -- do you vote for the best candidate who has no chance of winning?"

Kevin Price, a political scientist at the University of Washington, estimates 50,000 to 70,000 people will participate in the Washington caucuses, which start at 10:30 sharp Saturday morning and may last several hours. Price, who is Clark's volunteer coordinator, said it is inefficient for candidates with shrinking war chests to spend their money to inform such a small voter pool. No media outlets have done polling, and none of the candidates is airing ads. "It's anybody's game," said state party spokeswoman Kirstin Brost, adding that three weeks ago Washington was Dean country, but that last week Kerry got a boost from Governor Gary Locke's endorsement. "And don't you love it when it goes into overtime."