Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry rolled up big victories and a pile of delegates in five states Tuesday night, while rivals John Edwards and Wesley Clark kept their candidacies alive with singular triumphs in a dramatic cross-country contest.

Edwards easily won his native South Carolina and Clark, a retired Army general from Arkansas, eked out victory in neighboring Oklahoma. Howard Dean earned no wins and a handful of delegates, his candidacy in peril. Joe Lieberman was shut out, too, and dropped out of the race.

“It’s a huge night,” Kerry told The Associated Press, even as rivals denied him a coveted sweep.

Racking up victories in Missouri, Arizona, North Dakota, New Mexico and Delaware, Kerry suggested that his rivals were regional candidates.

“I compliment John Edwards, but I think you have to run a national campaign, and I think that’s what we’ve shown tonight,” the four-term Massachusetts senator said. “You can’t cherry-pick the presidency.”

With Iowa and New Hampshire already in his pocket, Kerry boasts a record of 7-2 in primary season contests. He won three states with more than 50 percent of the vote, and ran strong in all seven states, especially among voters favoring a candidate with experience or someone can beat President Bush.

Still, the undisputed front-runner missed a chance to put two major rivals away.

It was a night of blown opportunities all around. Edwards narrowly lost to Clark in Oklahoma, missing a chance to show his presidential mettle outside the South and emerge as Kerry’s chief rival.

Clark did better than expected – one victory and at least two second-place finishes – but it came at a heavy price. He spent $11 million on TV ads in hopes of standing alone against Kerry.

Of the 269 pledged delegates at stake Tuesday night, an AP analysis showed Kerry winning 88, Edwards 58, Clark 25, Dean three and Al Sharpton one, with 94 yet to be allocated. Kerry won the two most delegate-rich states, Missouri and Arizona, while Clark and Edwards divided the next two biggest prizes.

Tuesday’s results pushed Kerry close to 200 delegates out of 2,162 needed for the nomination, including the superdelegates of lawmakers and party traditionalists. Dean trailed by nearly 70, Edwards by nearly 100.

Democrats award delegates based on a candidates’ showing in congressional districts, giving Kerry’s rivals a chance to grab a few delegates even in contests they lost.

In nearly every region of the nation, the most diverse group of Democrats yet to cast votes this primary season said they had a singular priority: Defeat President Bush this fall.

“I don’t care who wins” the Democratic primary, said Judy Donovan of Tucson, Ariz. “I’d get my dog to run. I’m not kidding. I would get Mickey Mouse in there. Anybody but Bush.”

In state after state, exit polls showed Kerry dominated among voters who want a candidate with experience or who could beat Bush.

Edwards had said he must win South Carolina, and he did by dominating among voters who said they most value a candidate who cares about people like them.

“It’s very easy to lay out the map to get us to the nomination,” Edwards told the AP, drawing a line from Michigan on Saturday to Virginia and Tennessee next Tuesday.

To the roar of his supporters, Edwards declared, “The politics of lifting people up beats the politics of tearing people down.”

As the votes were being counted in Oklahoma, Clark mused about the future of his candidacy. “This could be over,” he told reporters. Hours later, he had won Oklahoma and finished second in Arizona and North Dakota – enough to fight another day.

Dean saved his money for a last stand in Wisconsin on Feb. 17, a long-shot strategy that some of his own advisers questioned.

“We’re going to have a tough night,” Dean told supporters as he promised to keep “going and going and going and going and going – just like the Energizer bunny.”

Said Steve Murphy, who ran Rep. Dick Gephardt’s campaign: “Howard Dean is done.” The list of ex-candidates grows: Florida Sen. Bob Graham dropped out first, then Carol Moseley Braun, Gephardt and Lieberman.

“Today the voters have rendered their verdict and I accept it,” Lieberman said.

Kerry, who just six weeks ago was written off as a candidate, reshaped the race with victories in Iowa and New Hampshire while Dean’s candidacy cratered. “I’ll keep working and fighting until I win the nomination, and then I’ll keep working and fighting until I beat George Bush,” he told the AP.

Kerry is racking up endorsements as he tries to unite the party behind his front-running candidacy. To that end, the 1.2 million-member American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second largest teachers’ union, planned to back Kerry on Wednesday, a senior union official said on condition of anonymity.

Even Democrats who didn’t vote for Kerry appear fairly comfortable with him. Large majorities of voters – ranging from about 70 percent in Oklahoma to more than 80 percent in Delaware – said they would be somewhat or very satisfied if Kerry wins the nomination, exit polls showed.

Nearly half the voters in South Carolina were black and nearly one in six in Arizona were Hispanic, the first contests with sizable minority populations in the primary campaign. In Missouri and Delaware, about 15 percent of the voters were black.

Looking beyond Tuesday, Kerry planned visits to Washington state and Michigan, where polls show him leading Saturday’s caucuses. Edwards and Clark focused on Tennessee and Virginia. All three candidates planned to air ads in the two southern states.

Kerry plans to buy ad time in Washington, D.C., to reach Democratic-heavy northern Virginia, aides said. It’s an expensive market, and it was unclear whether Edwards would have the money to match Kerry ad-for-ad as he did in Tuesday’s states.

Dean, a former Vermont governor, ran out of cash and momentum after finishing third in Iowa and a distant second in New Hampshire. He ran no TV ads in the seven states and intended to stay off the air for a spate of other contests until Feb. 17, when Wisconsin votes.

On a deeply divided staff, some Dean aides were focused on raising money to cover campaign debts, an emphasis that gave a backseat to costly political tactics such as television commercials.

Exit polls also showed that nearly half of voters in five states said they made up their minds within the last week. One in five waited until Tuesday to pick a candidate.

Edwards scored well among whites, older people, the less-educated and voters who called themselves moderate or conservative, according to exit polls in South Carolina.

Kerry and Clark, both Vietnam veterans, had plenty of company. Seven in 10 Oklahoma voters, and nearly that many in South Carolina, said they had served in the military or have somebody in their households who did, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and the television networks by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.

In the run-up, 21st graf

AP-ES-02-03-04 2347EST

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