Gephardt Endorses Kerry

Already flush with endorsements from establishment Democrats, presidential front-runner John Kerry secured the backing of former rival Dick Gephardt on Friday.

"I'm here today adding my voice to all of yours to say that we want and need this man to be the next president of the United States," Gephardt said, standing at Kerry's side at a rally in Warren, Michigan.

The former House Democratic leader, who quit the race after Iowa's caucuses, said Kerry will push for better health care and offers the best chance to defeat President Bush.

"We must win the White House," the Missouri lawmaker said. "Over the course of the campaign, I found that we shared common goals," Gephardt said. Ignoring months of public and private sparring, Kerry asserted that he, Gephardt and their staffs had never "traded a negative" comment.

The endorsement, Kerry hopes, will pay immediate dividends for the Democratic bid to rally organized labor behind his candidacy.

An alliance of labor groups formed by the Teamsters and more than a dozen industrial unions to support Gephardt were expected to endorse Kerry after union presidents briefed their members over the next week.

"There are two reasons Gephardt's backing is important to Kerry," said Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000. "Gephardt has a lot of credibility with labor. The states to come are labor intensive. Dick Gephardt has a lot of institutional support. He left the campaign on good graces. Dick Gephardt could conceivably be a potential VP candidate."

Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Michigan's U.S. senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, have all endorsed Kerry ahead of the state's Saturday primary. Kerry holds a commanding leads in the latest polls of Michigan voters.

Kerry's opponents, meanwhile, are seeking to slow his rapid rise and establish themselves as his alternative. A fallen Howard Dean is camping out in Wisconsin with hopes of resurrecting his struggling campaign. And, John Edwards and Wesley Clark, sons of the South, are stumping in that region.

In Tennessee, Clark accused Edwards of not supporting veterans programs in the Senate. Although the retired Army general has refrained from criticizing his opponents for much of the campaign, he has become more vocal about his rivals in recent days.

In response to Clark's accusation earlier in the week that Edwards was hypocritical for criticizing three proposals he voted for in the Senate — education reform, the Patriot Act and the Iraq war — Edwards questioned whether Clark's comments were called for.

"This is the kind of petty sniping that people are sick of and my campaign is about something bigger and stronger," Edwards said. "I think what General Clark should be talking about is what he wants to do for the country."

Howard Dean, the fallen front-runner without a win who was trailing in polls in upcoming delegate elections, was pushing supporters for advertising cash for the Wisconsin primary as he gambled the future of his campaign on a victory there Feb. 17.

Once again, he predicted that he would prevail. "We're going to win in Wisconsin," Dean said Thursday, days after promising a win in Washington state.

Kerry was likely to add to his seven election victories this weekend when voters turned out for elections offering a total of 228 pledged delegates. Elections in Michigan and Washington were Saturday and in Maine on Sunday.

Edwards, who won South Carolina's primary, and Clark, who found victory in Oklahoma, both looked to Tennessee and Virginia, with 151 delegates, to keep Kerry winless in the South and keep their own candidacies alive.

Dean stayed in Wisconsin — except for a brief sojourn to his Burlington, Vt., headquarters — to execute his last-ditch strategy. On Thursday, he cut short a day of campaigning in Michigan to fly to Wisconsin. He told supporters in an e-mail that he would be out of the race for the Democratic nomination if he did not win the Wisconsin primary.

"We must win Wisconsin," Dean wrote in the e-mail. "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 four candidates are positioning themselves for a Feb. 17 showdown in Wisconsin, but Kerry has the most money coming in and supporters on board.