Quotes of the Day

John Kerry’s campaign had been scrupulous about not predicting victory before the election results were in. But that discipline broke down as Kerry flew into Richmond, Virginia Saturday. When his plane touched down, aides distributed to reporters the text of a speech Kerry would deliver later in the evening, which assumed he would win that day’s Michigan and Washington State caucuses, whose results had not yet been announced. "A great message is being sent from Michigan and Washington State," read the speech Kerry planned to give, "the same message we heard from Iowa to Missouri to Arizona and New Mexico"—states Kerry had previously captured.

Kerry was uncomfortable with his staff jumping ahead of the results, but not for long. Within hours the numbers were in and Kerry had scored resounding victories. His win in Washington dealt a near-fatal blow to Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who had clung to the faint hope that he could eke out a victory there to keep his campaign alive until the Feb. 17 Wisconsin primary. Kerry was now poised as well to capture the next two southern prizes — Tuesday’s Tennessee and Virginia primaries — which North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and retired Gen. Wesley Clark have banked on winning to remain credible alternatives to the Massachusetts senator. Kerry victories there would "demonstrate that he is a candidate who can appeal to a diversity of voters," said one of his Tennessee organizers. It could also seal the nomination for him.

After his Iowa triumph, Kerry had moved quickly to build up his ground forces in Michigan and Washington. His paid staff in Michigan increased to more than 35, many of them former Iowa workers, and he fielded several hundred volunteers. It turned out to be not much of a contest. None of the candidates aired TV ads and Dean, who had once promised to mount a comeback in Michigan, all but abandoned the state. Kerry had a cakewalk. The state’s two senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, endorsed him along with Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who turned out to be a lively campaigner, belting out better lines than Kerry when she appeared with him on the stump. "They can't find weapons of mass destruction, but they can find budgets of mass destruction," Granholm shouted at a Kerry campaign rally in Flint, Mich. She says her state has lost 300,000 jobs during the Bush administration.

Kerry’s support of NAFTA and higher automotive fuel economy standards aren’t popular with Michigan’s beleaguered auto industry, but the state’s voters were more than willing to overlook those stands. By Thursday, a Detroit News poll had him winning walking away. Friday, Kerry made a triumphal tour of the state with his one-time rival, Congressman Dick Gephardt, at his side endorsing him.

Kerry began with six staffers in Washington, but 14 more were flown in after the Iowa victory to mount a ground operation. Washington had 6,500 caucuses meeting at 714 sites, and campaign operatives scrambled to recruit enough volunteer "Kerry Lieutenants" to cover all the caucus sites. Kerry aides believed from the outset that Washington was a state where their candidate could do well. The environment is an important issue there and Kerry has a strong environmental record plus the endorsement of the League of Conservation Voters. The state also has a high concentration of veterans and Kerry volunteers organized two-dozen veteran health parties to watch a movie about Kerry and his Swift Boat crewmates.

But Dean had once been considered a front-runner in Washington and had boasted that he would pull out all the stops to take it. "I really do think we're going to win Washington," Dean had predicted earlier this week, "but it's going to be close." Kerry did not go into Saturday’s caucuses assuming an easy win. Polls were of little value. Only a small number of caucus-goers would turn out — his aides expected no more than 50,000 to show up — so a ground organization to get out the vote was as critical as it had been in Iowa.

In both Virginia and Tennessee, where Clark and Edwards had spent heavily on television ads, polls showed Kerry now with comfortable leads. Kerry had always considered Virginia a ripe target and had set up a five-person staff there last August. Some were diverted to Iowa, but when Kerry won those caucuses they not only returned, but another 25 staffers were rushed to the state. Kerry began airing television ads Thursday in all the state’s major media markets, including Northern Virginia around Washington, D.C., and the campaign plans to keep those ads running through Tuesday morning. "Virginia became more important because Dean was weakened and Clark and Edwards were a target," explains Lawrence Framme, Virginia chairman for the Kerry campaign. "A win here, or a very strong showing, will demonstrate clearly that Kerry can perform in the South." Clark’s and Edwards’ arguments that only they can compete in that region "go out the window."

Kerry, who put $6.5 million of his own money into the campaign to resuscitate it before Iowa, is now having no trouble raising money to mount a national effort as the front-runner. His campaign reported taking in $5 million since Jan. 1, $4.5 million of which came after his Iowa victory. Thursday night Kerry huddled with his finance team and high-rolling New York City donors at the New York Hilton. They had good news: the New York campaign fundraisers had raked in more than $750,000.

Can Kerry be stopped? It becomes less and less likely as he piles up primary and caucus victories. If there’s a chink left in his armor, it may come with the populist rhetoric he’s adopted on the stump. Kerry likes to portray himself as an outsider who will take a broom to special interests and lobbyist controlling Washington with their campaign dollars. He lustily attacks Republicans for "protecting the pocketbooks of their cronies who line their campaign coffers with contributions." He promises as President to "scour the tax code of the United States" for all the loopholes special interests and greedy corporations have gotten, and in the first hundred days of his administration to "issue an executive order that would prohibit anybody from the government from going directly into lobbying for a period of five years so we break this incestuous game."

Stirring words, but they’ve made him fair game for reporters digging up instances during his 19 years in the Senate when he’s seemed willing to play the Washington money game. Kerry boasts he hasn't taken PAC money in his last four campaigns. But he doesn't mention the fact that he's raised millions of dollars for his campaigns directly from the employees of those businesses and the special interests instead of having the money come through their PACs. For Kerry's 2002 Senate campaign, for example, he took in $1.4 million from lawyers and law firms, $763,773 from securities and investment employees, $484,362 from real estate interests, and $367,759 from the entertainment industry, according to figures compiled by the Center For Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group. "The sources of the contributions are the same whether they come from PACs or the employees," Sheila Krumholz, research director for the CRP, tells TIME. "The money represents the very same interests either way. And the politician knows where the money is coming from."

A report in the Jan. 14 edition of the The Hill newspaper revealed that in the late 1990s, Kerry "weighed in on an obscure Coast Guard rulemaking process to the benefit of a foreign company represented by Cassidy & Associates, one of the highest-grossing D.C. lobbying firms. Shortly after his intervention, he received close to $8,000 in bundled contributions from Cassidy employees." Last week, the Associated Press reported that Kerry persuaded Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain to drop his provision to cut $150 million from a multi-billion-dollar highway and tunnel project in Massachusetts, known as the "Big Dig," in response to charges that a major insurer for the project, American International Group, had reaped windfall profits. AIG executives later donated $18,000 to Kerry’s Senate and presidential campaigns.

Kerry aides insist the senator’s intervention in the Coast Guard’s rule-making wasn’t linked to the Cassidy contribution. At a stop in Maine on Thursday, he hotly denied intervening on AIG’s behalf for campaign dollars. All of Massachusetts’ congressmen and senators "fought to hold on to $150 million for the Big Dig, which was the most important single project in Massachusetts and New England," Kerry said, arguing that he had opposed insurers like AIG on other issues "far more important to them than anything to do with the Big Dig."

Democratic voters so far seem prepared to accept Kerry’s promise to fight Washington’s special interests in the future — and ignore the fact that he benefited from them in the past. Dean and Clark have gained little traction tarring him as a Washington insider. And if Kerry keeps racking up victories their voices will become fainter and fainter.

• Douglas Waller
• The Senator scores big in Michigan and Washington. Has he done enough to secure the Democratic nominaton?