Dean attacks Kerry, race moves to Wisconsin

WASHINGTON - Democrat Howard Dean launched a fierce attack on presidential front-runner John Kerry on Wednesday, calling him a product of Washington's corrupt culture as the race shifted to Wisconsin for a crucial test next week.

The day after Kerry swept two primaries in the South to knock out rival Wesley Clark, Dean went on the attack in Wisconsin and John Edwards hammered home his economic message in a desperate bid to slow Kerry's march to the nomination.

The Massachusetts senator, who has scored 12 wins in the first 14 contests in the hunt for a challenger to President George W Bush in November, took a day off the campaign trail after victories in Virginia and Tennessee tightened his grip on the role of presumptive nominee.

He still received more good news with the endorsement of a coalition of 19 labour unions that had backed former rival Richard Gephardt, and the backing of a dozen members of Congress who had supported Clark.

Clark, the retired general and former Nato commander, ended his White House bid in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, after third-place finishes behind Kerry and Edwards in Virginia and Tennessee.

Clark's departure was a boon to Edwards, who battled his fellow Southerner for votes in a series of primaries. Edwards, a North Carolina senator, and Dean, the former governor of Vermont, face a showdown with Kerry in Wisconsin next Tuesday as they struggle to prove their campaigns are still viable.

Dean, the fallen front-runner who skipped the two Southern contests to focus on Wisconsin, launched a heated attack on Kerry for his role in what Dean called the "corrupt" fund-raising climate in Washington.

He cited reports that former New Jersey Senator Robert Torricelli, who is now backing Kerry, contributed to a group that ran ads in December using images of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to question Dean's ability to combat terrorism.

Torricelli left the Senate in 2002 in a cloud of ethics allegations.

"I don't think John Kerry is capable of changing the political culture in Washington," Dean said at a news conference in Milwaukee, likening the attack ad to the work of Bush and Republicans and making reference to Kerry's support for a resolution authorizing the war in Iraq.

"First he sided with the president on the war .... now we find he is more like President Bush than we ever imagined," Dean said. "This is exactly what we don't need in Washington. I got into this race because I wanted to stand up and give the Democratic Party some backbone and character."

Kerry spokesman David Wade rejected the accusations and said Kerry had a long history of fighting Washington special interests. "Another day, another Dean act of desperation," Wade said.

Kerry has tried to stay above the fray with his Democratic rivals, focusing his criticism on Bush as he looks ahead to the general election in the fall.

With some polls showing Kerry leading Bush in a one-on-one matchup, the Kerry campaign took credit for Bush's higher public profile in recent days, which includes a televised interview over the weekend and repeated defences of the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

"Long before the White House intended to begin campaigning, we've forced George W Bush to come stumbling out of the Rose Garden," Kerry's campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, said in a fund-raising e-mail to supporters.

Kerry's wins in Virginia and Tennessee added to his decisive lead in delegates to July's nominating convention. He now has 511, according to MSNBC, while Dean is in second with 184 and Edwards is third with 164.

Edwards, who has based his campaign on a positive economic agenda, has refused to try to make up ground on Kerry by attacking him.

He stuck to that script on Wednesday, stressing his economic plan to create and protect American jobs by working for fairer trade deals and revising the tax code to encourage US companies to keep jobs in America.

At a union hall in Janesville, Wisconsin, Edwards pointed to an announcement on Tuesday that 500 workers at an automotive parts plant in Milwaukee could find their jobs moving to Mexico.

"We can do something about this. We can strengthen working- class families in America," Edwards said. "In the America we are going to build together ... we will stand up and fight for you and for your jobs."

Edwards said he had received "not one word" of pressure from Democratic Party officials to leave the race and clear a path for Kerry. But with another win in Wisconsin, Kerry could force Edwards and Dean to face the same decision made by Clark.

- REUTERS