John Edwards Wins South Carolina Primary

John Edwards won his native state of South Carolina and hoped for victory outside the South to slow Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry, who aimed for a string of victories on a seven-state election night.

Kerry, Edwards and retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark fought it out in Oklahoma, while pre-election polls showed Kerry leading in the five remaining primaries or caucuses. Kerry, a four-term Massachusetts senator, hoped to cement his front-runner status.

Edwards had said he must win South Carolina, and he did by dominating among voters who called the economy their biggest concern.

He also scored well among whites, older people, the less-educated and voters who called themselves moderate or conservative. Edwards split the black vote with Kerry, despite the Massachusetts senator's high-profile endorsement from Rep. Jim Clyburn, the state's most influential black politician.

Clark needed a victory in Oklahoma to keep his candidacy alive. Sen. Joe Lieberman's dim hopes hinged on Delaware, while fallen front-runner Howard Dean conceded in advance that he was likely to remain winless in the nominating campaign.

At stake were 269 pledged delegates - more than 10 percent of the 2,162 needed for the nomination - in Missouri (74), Arizona (55), South Carolina (45), Oklahoma (40), New Mexico (26), Delaware (15) and North Dakota (14). Party leaders hope to have a presumptive nominee in place by mid-March to begin the race against President Bush.

Heading into the seven-state race, Kerry had 115 delegates to Dean's 114. The other candidates lagged far behind. "I'm ready," Kerry said in Arizona, before flying to Washington state which holds caucuses Saturday with Michigan.

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.

While relieved to win South Carolina, Edwards hoped to upset Kerry in Oklahoma or elsewhere to emerge as the front-runner's chief rival.

Clark's supporters were braced for a bad night. "I think the general is about to meet Sitting Bull," said David Paterson, Senate Minority Leader of the New York legislature and a Clark backer.

At Clark's Oklahoma City headquarters, the candidate's 34-year-old son, Wesley Clark Jr., told reporters he wanted his father to quit the race if he did not win Oklahoma.

"It's really been disillusioning. You go out and see the way politics really works. It is a dirty business filled with a lot of people pretending to be a lot of things they are not," Clark's son said.

For the voters, nearly half of them in all five states said they made up their minds within the last week. One in five waited until Tuesday to pick a candidate.

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.