Dean: Win Wisconsin Or Quit

Howard Dean says he will be out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination if he fails to win the Wisconsin primary on Feb. 17.

"The entire race has come down to this," Dean wrote in a Thursday morning e-mail to supporters. "We must win Wisconsin."

Dean said he expects to "get a boost" from this weekend's contests in Washington state, Michigan and Maine, "but our true test will be the Wisconsin primary. A win there will carry us to the big states of March 2 and narrow the field to two candidates. Anything less will put us out of this race."

The e-mail, which included a plea for a $100 contribution, has already had an impact, reports CBS News' Eric Salzman. More than $125,000 in online contributions poured in by noon EST Thursday, the Dean campaign said.

Dean, once the front-runner with $41 million in campaign funds, has failed to win a single delegate contest since voting began with the Iowa caucuses Jan. 19. He finished a distant third in Iowa, behind John Kerry and John Edwards, and was runner-up to Kerry in the New Hampshire primary Jan. 27. He did not win any of the seven states that had caucuses or primaries Tuesday.

Adding to his reputation as the front-runner, Kerry picked up the endorsement of Maine Gov. John Baldacci and former Senate majority leader George Mitchell of Maine. The governor, recuperating from injuries suffered in a car accident, released a statement during Kerry's trip to Portland, Maine, saying, "Senator Kerry is ready to lead. He is ready to take our country in a better direction."

The state holds Democratic caucuses Sunday.

Kerry's other major rivals for the nomination, Edwards and Wesley Clark, were fanning across the country in search of support in upcoming contests that can keep them competitive.

Dean earlier had vowed to remain in the race through March 2, the "Super Tuesday" Election Day featuring 10 contests for delegates. He has targeted Wisconsin's Feb. 17 primary for an all-out effort to slow Kerry's march toward the nomination, part of a long-shot strategy of winning delegates if not first place in the elections themselves.

Dean plans to campaign in Michigan, yet the former Vermont governor has acknowledged that he probably can't win there in Saturday's caucuses. But he hopes to pick up enough delegates to keep him in the race.

Polls in Michigan, where 128 delegates are at stake, show Kerry leading Edwards and Dean by more than 40 percentage points.

There are no public polls in Washington State and Maine, but strategists for all four campaigns said Kerry should win easily. Kerry's internal polls show him safely leading in both states, sources close to the senator said.

Dean's strategists hold out a glimmer of hope because Washington has a history of backing underdogs and Maine has a small, unpredictable Democratic voting base.

Clark and Edwards skipped campaigning for the three weekend contests, sticking instead to their Southern roots with plans to travel Thursday to states that vote on Tuesday. Clark is taking a bus tour of Tennessee while Edwards is traveling from Memphis to Virginia.

Two officials close to Clark, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the retired Army general considered dropping out of the race Tuesday night after scoring a single victory, a nail-biter in Oklahoma. They said his wife, Gert, helped talk him into staying in the race against the advice of some backers.

In another sign of trouble, Clark's staff agreed to a pay freeze to pay for television ads.

Confident of victory, Kerry opted not to advertise in the weekend states, though he will travel to them. Dean had no choice; he is short on money and is saving his resources for Wisconsin. And yet, to the dismay of his senior advisers, Dean raised expectations Wednesday.

"We are going to win the Washington caucuses," he said in Seattle.

Looking ahead to Wisconsin, Edwards and Clark decided Wednesday to air ads in the state.

Kerry hopes to knock one or both of them out of the race next week, thus he decided to air ads in Tennessee, Virginia and the District of Columbia, an expensive TV market that reaches into heavily Democratic northern Virginia. Clark and Edwards are buying ads in Virginia and Tennessee, but not in the critical northern Virginia market.