Pheonix ? Howard Dean unloaded Saturday on front-runner Sen. John Kerry, calling the Massachusetts senator a “Republican” with an “appalling” reliance on money from corporate special interests and lobbyists.

Dean, trying to position himself as the anti-Kerry candidate, told reporters here: “I’m outraged by a candidate who says that he’s against the special interests, and then find out he’s taking more special interest money than anyone else in 15 years.”

Dean, the former governor of Vermont, based his latest attack on a report in Saturday’s Washington Post detailing how Kerry received more lobbyist money than any other senator over the past 15 years. “It turns out we got more than one Republican in the Democratic race,” Dean said, in a swipe at Kerry and retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who voted for President Bush’s father.

“I think Governor Dean has, in the course of this campaign, made a number of comments that he’s had to apologize to other candidates for, and I would respectfully suggest that that may be just one more of them,” Kerry said to reporters during a stop in Oklahoma City.

Kerry, coming off back-to-back wins and breaking away in several key Feb. 3 primary states, said: “The only people that have contributed to my campaigns to the United States Senate are individual Americans. Now are some of those individual Americans lobbyists? Yeah, sure. They haven’t gotten anything for it. Those guys have never, ever, ever gotten anything.”

Counterattack

Behind the scenes, the Kerry campaign moved aggressively to paint Dean as the captive of special interests. Aides distributed a nine-page document titled “Dean’s long history of ties to corporate lobbyists,” which accused then-Gov. Dean of holding secret meetings with industry representatives, nuzzling up to Washington-based lobbyists and holding shares in Vermont utilities.

Four days before Tuesday’s showdown in seven states, Kerry is trying to fend off attacks from Democrats and Republicans alike, nail down key endorsements, attract money and position himself to lock up the nomination as early as this month.

With a huge press and staff entourage, Kerry is running like a front-runner, often avoiding direct confrontation with his rivals and relying on key allies to aggressively lobby members of Congress and top state officials to join his team, Democrats said.

Edwards factor

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., speaks Saturday at a rally at the Oklahoma Firefighter's Museum in Oklahoma City.

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, who many Democrats consider the biggest threat to Kerry, began his day with an enthusiastic crowd of several hundred in Albuquerque, where New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson told him, “Senator, your momentum is incredible.” Richardson, slated to be permanent chairman of the Democratic National Convention this summer in Boston, is officially neutral and has found something to praise each time any of the candidates has visited his state.

Edwards salted his standard “two Americas” stump speech with enough local references to please the audience, noting in his denunciation of “predatory lenders” that “in New Mexico, the average family spent $1,700 on interest and penalties on credit cards” and claiming his economic program would “lift 100,000 New Mexicans out of poverty.”

Picking up where former candidate Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri left off, Edwards launched a new 30-second ad on trade in South Carolina and Oklahoma.

Clark, fighting with Edwards for support in the South and Southwest, told voters in Mesilla, N.M., Bush was the “most divisive, polarizing leader in recent American history.”