John F. Kerry buried John Edwards on Tuesday in a California-to-New York landslide, sweeping nine of 10 states across the country and effectively clinching the Democratic presidential nomination six weeks after the balloting began.
Sen. Edwards of North Carolina will quit the field today in his hometown of Raleigh, N.C., party strategists said, bringing a close to one of the quickest and least contentious Democratic primary contests in decades.
The general election that follows is expected to be as close as it is bitterly fought.
In California, Sen. Kerry of Massachusetts rolled to one of his biggest victories of the day. With 71% of the votes counted, he was swamping Edwards 65% to 19%.
Kerry's only loss Tuesday came in Vermont, where ex-governor and former presidential hopeful Howard Dean scored a surprise victory. Kerry beat Edwards by a slim margin in Georgia.
Otherwise, he rolled up big victories, flattening Edwards not just in Kerry's home state of Massachusetts but also in Connecticut, Maryland, New York, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Ohio -- one of the states where Edwards campaigned hardest.
With his performance Tuesday, Kerry lifted his record to 27 victories in 30 contests, and ensured the rest of the Democratic primary season -- which lasts until early June -- will amount to little more than a victory lap around the nation.
A considerably tougher fight awaits Kerry in the general election, with President Bush poised to spend more than $150 million, a record, leading up to the party nominating conventions this summer.
Bush's first reelection ads begin airing Thursday in more than a dozen key states.
The voting Tuesday was a national primary of sorts, with balloting taking place in states representing a cross-section of America: in the political behemoths of California and New York, and in tiny Rhode Island; in the agricultural heartland and in the Deep South; in the nation's most urbanized centers and in rural hamlets.
At stake were 1,151 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in July, or just over half of the total needed to win the nomination.
In California, as elsewhere, the issues of uppermost concern to Democratic primary voters were jobs and the economy. There was also a deep and abiding desire to oust Bush, with about one-third of those surveyed in California saying that was the main reason they voted for their candidate.
