NEWS ANALYSIS - NYT
Competition Back in Race
By TODD S. PURDUM
MILWAUKEE, Feb. 17 — In this unsettled Democratic primary season, time has been John Edwards's friend, and competition has always inspired John Kerry, and on Tuesday the restless voters of Wisconsin gave both men a bit more of each.
Senator Kerry racked up another victory, but Senator Edwards's surprisingly strong second-place showing here gives him the ability to argue that the 29 days since the Iowa caucuses have not been enough time to pick his party's best-tested nominee.
Mr. Kerry now faces at least two more weeks of the kind of contest that has helped sharpen his skills on the stump.
Democratic Party leaders designed this year's front-loaded primary process to produce a consensus candidate quickly, without bloodletting and with the broad backing needed to take on President Bush.
Mr. Kerry had hoped Wisconsin would make him the near-nominee with just such support, allowing him to showcase an array of pragmatic policy positions on topics like tax cuts, trade and gay marriage that he contends can make him competitive in November
Instead, this iconoclastic state gave Mr. Edwards more evidence for his own lawyer's case that a mere month of voting should not produce a verdict just yet. He came in a close second and won the support of about half the primary voters who made up their minds within the last three days, according to a survey of voters leaving the polls.
With Wisconsin allowing independents and Republicans to vote in its open primary, the senator from North Carolina also won the support of roughly 4 in 10 non-Democrats, compared with about a quarter for Mr. Kerry.
Howard Dean has now seen his own candidacy come full circle from asterisk to afterthought, with a few heady months as a fiery, front-running asteroid in between. He had staked out Wisconsin as his last stand, but fell far short. Depending on how and whether he decides to retool his efforts in the days and weeks to come, as a quest for personal vindication or as a journey to shape debate in the party he briefly electrified, he has already largely framed the terms of the debate. Both Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards now covet his support, and his supporters.
If Dr. Dean spent months allowing restive, powerless Democrats to feel that it was good to be angry, Mr. Kerry began persuading voters last month that it would be better to get even for the election of 2000. In his final rallies here, Dr. Dean was urging voters to send a message to Washington, while Mr. Kerry long ago asked them to send a president. Now Mr. Edwards is arguing that he deserves yet another look, and though he lost 15 states before Wisconsin, enough voters have agreed with him to keep him in the race.
"This is a great place for the Democrats to be," said Mandy Grunwald, a media consultant who advised Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut until he dropped out of the race earlier this month. "The president's on the defensive," she said. "I think if this goes on some more, it actually isn't so bad for the Democrats, or for Kerry, to keep going out there. The American people are learning more and more about John Kerry and the Democrats, all of which is good, and I'm not that eager to shift to the Republicans training their full fire on one person."
Members of any party could participate in the Wisconsin primary, and about twice as many people who called themselves Republicans voted here on Tuesday as in any other state so far, offering at least a tentative hint of Mr. Edwards's potential appeal in a general election.
As in South Carolina and Oklahoma, states where he finished ahead of Mr. Kerry, Mr. Edwards again did significantly better than Mr. Kerry among voters who said that the economy was the issue that mattered most in making their decision. That issue was cited by more voters here than any other— roughly 40 percent — and Mr. Edwards won nearly half of them, compared with about a third for Mr. Kerry, the survey found.
The survey of voters leaving polling places throughout the state was conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International for television networks and The Associated Press.
While about 20 percent of Wisconsin voters considered the ability to defeat Mr. Bush the most important quality, another 20 percent said the impression that the candidate cared about them was most important. As he has since Iowa, Mr. Kerry did best with those for whom beating Mr. Bush was most important, getting 70 percent of their support. Mr. Edwards drew the support of about 45 percent of those who said caring was the most important quality, compared with about a third for Mr. Kerry, the survey found.
In addition, a majority of the voters who considered a positive message to be most important supported Mr. Edwards as did a majority of those who were concerned about the candidate having the right temperament. Mr. Kerry did very well with people who viewed experience as an important quality.
Since both candidates overtook Dr. Dean in Iowa, Mr. Kerry, and to a lesser extent, Mr. Edwards, has borrowed from the former Vermont governor's anti-Bush approach while sanding down the sharper edges. Their contrasts with each other are mostly textbook questions of style and tone, with Mr. Kerry the cool, Yankee voice of experience and Mr. Edwards putting forward a softer, warmer, Southern face.
"President Bush said that he was a uniter and not a divider, and he has united the Democratic Party in a way it has not been united in a generation," said Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, who supports Mr. Kerry. He added: "Every candidate is now 95 percent on the same sheet. Each has a different articulation of it, but they all oppose Bush in the same way."
If Mr. Edwards, who has run a doggedly upbeat campaign, is to continue as an alternative to Mr. Kerry, he will face pressure to begin drawing some sharper differences with his opponent. He suggested one possible approach in their debate Sunday night by gently mocking Mr. Kerry for a long-winded answer about his vote to authorize Mr. Bush to use force in Iraq, a position Mr. Edwards shared.
Mr. Kerry did not wear especially well in the period in early 2003 when he was seen by many party leaders as the presumptive front-runner. Only after he slipped far behind Dr. Dean in the polls and joined him and Mr. Bush in daring to opt-out of public financing and the spending and contribution limits that come with it did Mr. Kerry begin to rebound.
Joe Trippi, who built a half-million strong Internet-based following when he was Dr. Dean's campaign manager until being replaced after he lost the New Hampshire primary, said: "Even the opt-out happened because of Dean. We moved the entire debate."
Mr. Edwards is now counting on time to keep moving.
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company |
