Washington Wrap

Dotty Lynch, Douglas Kiker, Beth Lester, Clothilde Ewing and Katie Dyer of the CBS News Political Unit have the latest from the nation's capital.

Wednesday's Headlines

* Poll Watch: 379 Delegates in the Next Week

* CBS News's Latest Delegate Count

* GOP: Fight Now or Later

* Sharpton Is Not the Winner in Black Community

* Ad Spending: What Kind of Return?

* Clark Jr. Has a Bad Day

* Farewell to Tauzin, But Why?

379 Delegates in the Next Week: Although the campaigns are still dueling over Feb. 3 spin, 379 delegates will be decided in the next week, including delegate-rich states like Washington and Michigan, which cast their votes on Saturday. While most polls have focused on Feb. 3, a Michigan poll out today suggests that Kerry's momentum will carry him through the weekend. With 128 delegates (the largest single cache yet) at stake in Michigan, a new Detroit News/Mitchell Poll (conducted Feb. 1 through Feb. 3, margin of error 5 percent) shows Kerry with a massive lead, at 56 percent. His closest competitor is Howard Dean, with 12 points.

In Washington, where 76 delegates are at stake in their caucuses, there are no new polls available. But with even more delegates up for grabs than Tuesday's Missouri contest, there is sure to be a big fight. As Howard Dean told supporters on Tuesday, "We need to win Washington state … Washington state will be the turning point, if we win, of this campaign," reports the Seattle Times.

Beyond Washington and Michigan, 175 more delegates will be up for grabs by Tuesday the 10th. On Sunday, 24 delegates will be decided in Maine. And on Tuesday, Virginia will decided 82 delegates along with Tennessee's 69. Virginia looks like it could be a race. A new Mason-Dixon poll (conducted Jan. 28-29; margin of error 5.7 percent) shows Kerry with 31, Clark with 22 and Edwards with 13. With undecideds at 18 percent, it remains to be seen how those voters will shift in the wake of Feb. 3. Look for more polls – and more pleas from candidates soon.

Michigan (128 delegates)
Detroit News/Mitchell Poll 2/1-3 (450 interviews)
Kerry 56
Dean 12
Edwards 7
Clark 3
Kucinich 3
Undecided 18

Tennessee (69 delegates)
Mason-Dixon Poll 1-28-29 (313 interviews)
Kerry 31
Clark 22
Edwards 13
Dean 7
Undecided 18

CBS News' Latest Delegate Count: Kerry In the Lead: Including last night's results, here is CBS News' latest delegate count, including superdelegates. A total of 2161 delegates are needed to win.

Kerry 255
Dean 156
Edwards 111
Clark 96
Lieberman 26
Sharpton 4
Gephardt 3

GOP Fight Now or Later: The New York Daily News takes a look at the debate within the GOP and the Bush-Cheney campaign about how best to take on Democratic frontrunner John Kerry. The issue that has emerged in the last week is which party – and which candidate – can claim to be strongest on national security issues.

The Daily News reports that "There's some internal debate about when to go nuclear with Kerry. Some senior strategists say the White House should 'focus on the agenda' as long as possible. Others believe new polls showing Kerry beating Bush must accelerate the attack timetable."

Bush-Cheney Campaign Chairman Marc Racicot gave a not-so-subtle indication of where he stands in a statement on Tuesday. Referring to the recent re-hashing of allegations that President Bush did not entirely fulfill his National Guard obligations during the 1970s, Racicot said of Kerry, "By embracing this line of attack, Sen. Kerry has made clear that he will accept and promote character assassination, innuendo and falsehood even when he doesn't have all the facts."

RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie jumped aboard the Kerry-bashing train and called DNC Chair Terry MacAuliffe, "the John Wilkes Booth of presidential character assassination."

This, interestingly, comes on the heels of a speech by Gillespie in which he essentially accused Kerry of being soft on defense and, in turn, lengthening the Cold War by not voting for expansion of nuclear weapons systems in the 1980s.

The New York Times sums up the fight over Bush and Kerry's respective military records during Vietnam and decides it's an issue that will not go away soon.

Little Love For Sharpton: Al Sharpton, who has staked much of his campaign on his ability to connect with minority voters, failed to achieve two of his main goals in South Carolina, reports The New York Times. With nearly all of the precincts reporting, Sharpton came in a distant third with around 10 percent of the vote, behind John Edwards and John Kerry who won 45 and 30 percent, respectively.

With less than 15 percent of the vote, this means he failed to win any delegates in the contest. According to exit poll results, part of his disappointing showing can be attributed to the fact that he did not win strong support among black voters.

Sharpton has dedicated much of his time on the trail to getting out the vote efforts, putting an emphasis on the black community. Looking at the four states yesterday which had sizable black populations, the candidate who benefited the most from the black community was John Kerry. In Delaware, Kerry won 44 percent of the black vote compared to Sharpton's 30. In Missouri, he won 54 percent of the black vote compared to Sharpton's 15. In Oklahoma, Kerry won 31 percent to Sharpton's eight. But in South Carolina, it was John Edwards who won the black vote with 37 percent, followed by Kerry with 34 percent and Sharpton with 17.

Always the talker though, Sharpton was able to spin his South Carolina results, citing who he beat rather than who he lost to. "I grew up admiring those that worked in the Senate. In fact, I voted for Joe Lieberman for vice president. Tonight in South Carolina I passed Joe Lieberman. Howard Dean had $40 million and many officials came and campaigned for him in the churches and cut commercials … We passed Howard Dean. Then it was Wesley Clark. We passed Clark. We passed everybody." He apparently wasn't referring to the number one and two slots.

As always though, he promised to soldier on, saying he would see Edwards and Kerry up north, on his home turf.

Ad Spending: What Kind of Return? Now that the votes are counted in the Feb. 3 states, it is possible to make some conclusions about what return the candidates' received on their investments. The best return was clearly for John Kerry, who rode a wave of free media to a win in five of the Feb. 3 states. Although the Kerry camp will not release its ad spending numbers, the TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group estimates that Kerry spent at least $590,000 since it began advertising just after the New Hampshire primary. For five wins in four expensive (North Dakota is the exception) states, that is a paltry amount compared with the millions Kerry spent in Iowa (at least $1.9 million) and New Hampshire ($2.6 million).

Perhaps the worst return on investment was for Wesley Clark. Clark spent about $1 million in Oklahoma, almost twice as much as John Edwards (about $600,000) and at least four times as much as Kerry. Eking out a tiny win has kept Clark's campaign alive, so it may have been worth it. In Arizona, however, Clark spent about $2.2 million to come in second to Kerry who spent only $147,000. And in South Carolina, Clark's spending topped $1.1 million to come in fourth. Edwards, who came in first in the Palmetto State, spent about $730,000 in the process.

Other losers in the cost-benefit analysis are Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman. Prior to New Hampshire, Dean had spent $3.25 million in four states: Arizona, South Carolina, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Although Dean pulled his ads post-N.H., his early largesse bought him little in the end. He came in third in Arizona, fifth in South Carolina, third in New Mexico and fourth in Oklahoma. And Lieberman, who spent about $2 million to run ads in South Carolina, Oklahoma, Delaware and Arizona, made double digits only in Delaware and dropped out of the race on Tuesday night.

Clark's Son Has a Tough Tuesday: Wesley Clark Jr., son of the eponymous presidential candidate, had a bit of an obscenity-laced meltdown on Tuesday, preemptively blaming the media for his father's faltering campaign. Fortunately for Clark Jr., his father won Oklahoma on Tuesday and will live to fight another day.

CBS News' Bonney Kapp, traveling with the Clark campaign, reports that Clark Jr., speaking with reporters outside his dad's Oklahoma City headquarters, said of presidential politics: "You go out and see how politics actually works, it's a dirty business, filled with a lot of people who are pretending to be a lot of things they are not."

Clark Jr., a former Army officer and Hollywood screenwriter, also got into some campaign nitty-gritty, telling reporters that he disagreed with the decision to skip the Iowa caucuses and that he believed his father should drop out if he failed to win any states on Tuesday. (Again, he won, and is still in the hunt.)

Clark Jr. also blamed the media for its focus on the horse race aspect of the campaign instead of the substantive issues. (Note: Only a campaign losing the horserace would care so much … We have not heard much griping out of Vanessa Kerry in the last few weeks.)

"The elections themselves don't really make that much of a difference … The only thing that makes a difference is what the national press covers and how they cover the horse race," Clark Jr. said.

Jamal Simmons, the candidate's press secretary, quickly told reporters that Clark did "not necessarily" agree with his son's take on politics.

Tauzin's Resignation: Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., announced that he will step down from his position as chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee effective mid-February and will not run for his 13th term in November. His resignation will spark a race for the chairmanship of the powerful House committee and his Louisiana congressional seat. Rep. Joseph Barton, R-Texas, now chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality, is a likely replacement for Tauzin, though other Republicans may get into the competition, reports the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Tauzin has been offered a position as the head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, reports The Hill. Tauzin has denied this as the reason for his resignation, citing recent health problems and a desire to spend more time with his family as the motivation instead. The PhRMA position pays an estimated $2-million a year and comes after Tauzin has sided with pharmaceutical companies on Medicare and health care reform, according to Common Cause. The group speculates that even if he took such stances on health care before being offered the position, Tauzin may have been trying to impress the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America in hopes of securing the job.

Louisiana's senior senator, John Breaux, will not be seeking re-election either. The two legislators had been instrumental in securing funding for Louisiana projects and their departure "will significantly reduce the clout of the state's delegation on Capitol Hill," according to the Times-Picayune.

Quote of the Day: "We're finally starting to show some movement from the 1 percent bracket." --Dennis Kucinich, on receiving 2 percent of the vote in Arizona and 3 percent in North Dakota in last night's Democratic contests (Cleveland Plain Dealer)