WASHINGTON (REUTERS) — John Kerry captured the Democratic nomination to challenge President Bush in November, scoring a string of coast-to-coast wins Tuesday that knocked rival John Edwards out of the race.
Kerry, who received a call of congratulations from Bush, quickly turned his focus to the general election and said he was “a fighter” who would challenge the president on a range of issues.
“Tonight the message could not be clearer: All across our country, change is coming to America,” Kerry told supporters in Washington. “With one united Democratic Party, we can and we will win this election.”
The Massachusetts senator continued his domination of the Democratic race on its biggest night of voting, scoring wins in nine states including victories in Georgia, Minnesota and Ohio, which had been targeted by Edwards.
The wins capped a spectacular political resurrection for Kerry, whose campaign was considered dead just two months ago but charged back to life as Democrats began to evaluate which candidate stood the best chance to beat Bush in November.
Kerry and Bush now embark on what promises to be a hard-fought, eight-month general-election campaign. Bush, who trails Kerry in some opinion polls, launches his first television ads in 17 battleground states Thursday as he starts to spend a more than $100 million campaign war chest.
Edwards had hoped to slow Kerry’s march to the nomination, but narrowly lost Georgia and was swamped by Kerry in most of the other states voting on “Super Tuesday.”
He canceled a planned campaign trip to Texas to return home to North Carolina, where aides said he will end his White House bid in a speech at the Raleigh high school attended by two of his children.
“We have been the little engine that could, and I am proud of what we have done together, you and I,” Edwards told supporters in Atlanta, claiming his campaign had put issues like poverty, civil rights and race back at the front of the Democratic agenda.
Former presidential contender Howard Dean, who dropped out of the race two weeks ago without a single win, triumphed in his home state of Vermont to spoil Kerry’s bid for a perfect sweep.
Dean, once the frontrunner in the Democratic race, was still on the ballot in Vermont, where he served as governor for 11 years. “While I ran for president I often said that America would be a better place if it was more like Vermont,” Dean said in a statement. “I still believe that to be true.”
In addition to Georgia, Minnesota and Ohio, Kerry won in California, Connecticut, Maryland, New York, Rhode Island and his home state of Massachusetts, giving him 27 wins in the first 30 Democratic contests.
At stake Tuesday was a total of 1,151 delegates to July’s nominating convention — more than half of the 2,162 delegates needed to win and the campaign’s biggest one-day haul.
The wins did not give Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, enough delegates to clinch the nomination, but made it almost mathematically impossible for Edwards, his last major rival, to catch him.