Last stand for Kerry's competitors

Noticeably, Kerry's stump speech here is peppered with the word "values." He tells a crowd at the Richmond Marriott ballroom: "We don't have a broken budget in Washington, D.C., we have a broken values system" and "When children are children, adults are supposed to transfer real values to them."

WHILE success in a primary says little about how a state will vote in the general election - indeed, most experts agree that Virginia and Tennessee are almost certain to vote Republican in November - wins in one or both states might quiet questions about whether Kerry would bother to compete in any Southern states in the fall.

Although Kerry's recent remark that Democrats did not need to win in the South to take back the White House was technically accurate - Al Gore would have done it if he had carried New Hampshire - it raised concern among some party members, since no Democrat has won the White House without carrying at least some Southern states.

Polls show Kerry ahead in both Virginia and Tennessee. He has also been gaining institutional support, recently securing the endorsement of Virginia Gov. Mark Warner. General Clark has largely pulled out of Virginia, focusing mainly on Tennessee.

In Virginia, Kerry is likely to be propped up in particular by the Washington, D.C., suburbs in the north. Edwards, by contrast, is focusing much of his efforts on the southern, more rural parts of the state, where a number of textile mills have closed.

As in South Carolina, Edwards is stressing trade as one of the few issues where he can draw a distinction with Kerry. The Massachusetts senator voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement. But because Edwards is also trying to run a positive campaign, he doesn't make the contrast explicit.

"I hear President Bush talking about security for Americans," he says at the Hyperlink Café in Richmond. "How about security for American jobs?"

Many Virginia voters are conscious of their probable impact in winnowing the field - and at least some seem to want to prolong the race. At the Kerry rally at the Richmond Marriott, Mary Jo Browning says she thinks it's "healthy" for the party to have a spirited competition, as long as the fight doesn't turn negative. A resident of Culpeper, Va., she's torn between Kerry and Edwards, but is leaning toward the North Carolina senator. She says Kerry has "experience," but Edwards "connects with people."

Yet James Plunky Branch, a jazz musician from Richmond who's backing Kerry, says he'd rather "have it decided early, and focus all the attention where it needs to be - on Bush and his weaknesses."

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