Kerry Grabs Big Lead In N.Y.

Sen. John F. Kerry has opened up a big lead over Sen. John Edwards among New York Democrats with less than two weeks to go before the state's crucial "Super Tuesday" primary, a statewide poll reported Friday.

The poll, from Marist College's Institute for Public Opinion, found Kerry leading Edwards, 66 percent to 14 percent, among likely voters in New York's March 2 Democratic presidential primary.

The two senators — Kerry is from Massachusetts and Edwards is from North Carolina — are facing a Super Tuesday showdown in New York and nine other states on March 2.

While Edwards has said he expects to do particularly well in upstate New York where manufacturing job losses have been heavy, the Marist poll found Kerry was well ahead — 70 percent to 14 percent — in that traditionally more conservative region.

In the poll, 50 percent of the likely voters said they were firmly committed to their candidate of choice and 36 percent said what they were mainly looking for was a candidate who could beat President Bush.

The poll was another piece of welcome news for the Democratic front-runner. On Thursday, Kerry earned the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, with the head of organized labor saying, "the time has come to unite behind one man, one leader, one candidate."

Amid chants of "Kerry! Kerry!," the Massachusetts senator welcomed the support of a formidable ally as he tries to blunt Edwards' challenges to his position on trade.

"Today we stand united in a common cause and that common cause is not just to defeat George Bush, but it is to put our country back on track, on the road of prosperity, the road of fairness, the road of jobs," Kerry told the crowd.

But Edwards, his campaign boosted by criticism of U.S. trade policy and the loss of jobs to overseas markets, called trade "a moral issue" that sets him apart from Kerry.

"When we talk about trade, we are talking about values," Edwards said in a speech at Columbia University as he tried to build on a surprisingly strong second-place showing in the Wisconsin primary.

The North Carolina senator focused on the economy and jobs while campaigning in Wisconsin, largely by making the case that trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement have led to a flow of high-paying jobs to China and other low-wage countries.

Edwards said he believes the same theme will work on Super Tuesday.

While Kerry has been critical of the way free trade deals have been carried out, the Massachusetts senator voted for them, setting the stage for the loss of jobs in the United States, Edwards said.

"There is no question that our current trade policies are good for the profits of multinational corporations," he said. "They are good for some people in the financial sector here in New York City — not all, but some."

Edwards continued his criticism of Kerry for voting for NAFTA, which many workers blame for job losses. Edwards said he opposed NAFTA during his 1998 Senate campaign.

"Those trade deals were wrong," he said. "They cost us too many jobs and lowered our standards."

But Kerry said he and Edwards have the same policy on trade. Both voted for normalized trade relations with China and both want to see labor and environmental standards addressed in trade pacts, he said.

Although Edwards said he would have voted against NAFTA, Kerry said: "He wasn't in the Senate back then. I don't know where he registered his vote, but it wasn't in the Senate."