Clark Says He's the 'Hombre' to Beat Bush

PHOENIX - Hopscotching across three states that are key to his campaign's survival, presidential candidate Wesley Clark told Arizona supporters Monday that he was "the best guy in the race to whip George W. Bush."

Campaigning the day before seven states hold primaries or caucuses, Clark rose early to greet workers at a tire factory in Oklahoma, where polls show him locked in a close race with front-runner John Kerry.

Clark later jetted to New Mexico to address a rally at the Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, speaking a bit of Spanish and telling voters about his 5-week-old grandson - Wesley Pablo Oviedo Clark - whose mother, the wife of Clark's only son, is Colombian.

"It's gonna take one tough hombre" to stand up to Bush, Clark said. "And I'm one tough hombre."

Hispanics, who make up a sizable percentage of Democratic voters in both Arizona and New Mexico, were a major focus for Clark on Monday. He joined most of the other Democratic presidential contenders at a forum Monday evening held by the League of United Latin American Citizens, and then jetted to a late-night rally in tiny Las Vegas, N.M., before heading back to Oklahoma City.

Clark is counting on a win in Oklahoma and a respectable showing in both Arizona and New Mexico on Tuesday to propel his campaign into the next round of contests. His campaign is spending heavily on television ads in Tennessee and Virginia, which host contests on Feb. 10, as well as Wisconsin, whose primary is Feb. 17.

"Oh, I'm gonna win - I'm not gonna name states, but I'll win," Clark told reporters aboard his campaign plane. "I'm looking at people's faces and I'm listening to what they tell me."

Campaign aides said that regardless of how Tuesday's seven contests turn out, the campaign has sufficient money to compete until Feb. 17.

After spending primary day in Oklahoma, Clark plans to fly to Tennessee late Tuesday night to begin campaigning there, with a statewide bus tour beginning Wednesday in Memphis.

"In a month, people will be doing the hypothetical game of who will be our V.P. candidate," quipped Chris Lehane, a senior strategist for the campaign.