WASHINGTON (Reuters) — Democratic front-runner John Kerry rolled to dominating wins in Virginia and Tennessee Tuesday, scoring a Southern sweep that could knock out at least one rival and put the nomination within reach.

Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, easily brushed aside two Southerners, Wesley Clark of Arkansas and John Edwards of North Carolina, to notch his first wins in the South and make the case that he is a national candidate who can rally Democrats in every region of the country.

“Americans are voting for change — East, West, North and now in the South,” Kerry said at a victory rally in Fairfax, Va. “We will fight for every vote, and we will carry our cause all across this land.”

The sweep gave Kerry 12 wins in the first 14 contests in the race to find a challenger to President Bush and appeared likely to knock at least Clark out of the race. It also set up a possibly climactic showdown next Tuesday in Wisconsin, where a Kerry win could effectively end the race or at least cripple his remaining rivals.

Clark, a retired general, and Edwards, a freshman senator, focused on Virginia and Tennessee all week in an effort to score strong enough showings to propel them on to Wisconsin.

But Edwards finished a distant second in Virginia, with Clark running third with less than 10 percent with nearly 90 percent of the votes counted. Kerry was getting one of every two votes.

In Tennessee, early returns showed Kerry with a double-digit lead over Edwards, with Clark in third place.

Edwards flew on to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to focus on the next test after lowering expectations all week to say he would be happy with finishes in the top two.

He hopes to be the last challenger to Kerry still in the race after Wisconsin, when the bulk of the delegates to July’s nominating convention still will be up for grabs.

Clark also had promised to push on to Wisconsin no matter what happened on Tuesday, but was endangered by a poor finish in Tennessee, where he focused his campaign. His advisers met Tuesday night to determine whether he should go on.

A total of 151 delegates to July’s nominating convention were at stake in Tennessee and Virginia.

 

Dean looks to Wisconsin

Howard Dean, the one-time front-runner and former governor of Vermont, looked past the two Southern states to concentrate on Wisconsin, where he had promised to make a possible last stand against Kerry.

But Monday, he said he would stay in the race past Wisconsin, win or lose.

“The election next Tuesday is about whether you want to stand up for a progressive America again,” said Dean, who finished fourth in both Virginia and Tennessee, at a Milwaukee rally. “We are going to win Wisconsin.”

Edwards and Clark skipped last weekend’s contests in Michigan, Washington and Maine, all won by Kerry, to concentrate on Tennessee and Virginia after beating Kerry last week in South Carolina and Oklahoma, respectively.

Those are Kerry’s only two losses on his drive to the nomination, and he has started looking ahead on the campaign trail to the fight with Bush.

He ignores his rivals at nearly every stop and concentrates his attacks on the president’s economic leadership, his ties to special interests and his shifting justification for going to war in Iraq.

Kerry’s opponents still hope something will derail his nonstop momentum and give them a chance, although neither Clark nor Edwards has shown much interest in attacking him on the campaign trail.

Even after the Wisconsin primary, which could amount to a final showdown with Kerry, about 75 percent of the 4,322 delegates will remain to be chosen.

That could leave the door open for an opponent who survives Wisconsin to make a final charge against Kerry heading into March 2 primaries in big states like California, New York and Ohio.