Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry, riding a hot streak in the presidential race, won the backing of former rival Richard Gephardt on Thursday as rival Howard Dean vowed to make what could be his last stand in Wisconsin. With five Democratic nominating contests scheduled over the next five days, Kerry's challengers frantically raised money and searched for a strategy to derail the Massachusetts senator before he runs away with the nomination to face President Bush in November. At separate appearances in Tennessee, Wesley Clark attacked Kerry's "hypocrisy" and John Edwards tried to draw distinctions between their trade policies as the White House hopefuls chased Kerry across five states. Gephardt, a Missouri congressman who dropped out of the race last month after a disappointing finish behind Kerry in Iowa, will endorse him at a campaign event in Warren, Michigan, on Friday. The two will appear together at later events in Michigan, which holds its nominating contest on Saturday. Gephardt's seal of approval for Kerry was expected to lead to an endorsement of Kerry by a coalition of labor unions that had backed Gephardt, with an announcement likely within the next week after union leaders conferred with members, labor sources said. One-time front-runner Dean looked beyond the next five contests and drew the line at the Feb. 17 primary in Wisconsin, telling supporters in an online fund-raising appeal that his fading campaign must win there or he would be finished. "The entire race has come down to this: We must win Wisconsin," said the former Vermont governor, who has squandered a huge lead in the polls and a 40 million US dollar bank account. "A win there will carry us to the big states on March 2 -- and narrow the field to two candidates. Anything else will put us out of the race." Clark, a retired general and former NATO commander, renewed his criticism of Kerry and Edwards, a North Carolina senator, for "hypocrisy" and "politics as usual." He accused them of attacking Bush on the stump but backing him in the Senate. "They've spent months on the campaign trail criticizing George W. Bush and his reckless policies, when, in the 107th Congress, both men voted with the president almost 70 percent of the time," Clark said in Lebanon, Tennessee, the latest stop on a bus tour of the state. "I don't think you can stand with Bush one day and than against him once you decide to run for president," he said. Edwards called Clark's comments "the kind of petty sniping that people are sick of." A Kerry spokesman noted the "irony" in Clark's past praise for Bush before he joined the campaign. **EDWARDS BRINGS UP TRADE ISSUE*** Edwards, campaigning for the second consecutive day in Tennessee, promised to change the free trade policies that he said have led to the state's loss of 96,000 jobs and pointedly made reference to those, like Bush and Kerry, who supported the North American Free Trade Agreement and other trade pacts. "What George W. Bush and the people who support these trade policies don't understand is that when you shut down the factory -- when you shut down the mill -- you shut down the town," said Edwards, who claims trade as one of his prime policy differences with Kerry. Kerry has seized command of the race with wins in seven of the first nine contests as the focus shifts to Michigan and Washington on Saturday, Maine on Sunday and Virginia and Tennessee on Tuesday. Back on the campaign trail after a day off, Kerry largely ignored his rivals during a rally in Portland, Maine, and aimed his criticism at Bush. "I'm here to mark with you the beginning of the end of the Bush administration," he told supporters as he won the endorsement of Maine Gov. John Baldacci. He later headed to New York for a fundraiser as all of the candidates focused on raising enough money to get them through the next few weeks. Kerry's campaign said it had raised 4.5 million since his come-from-behind win in Iowa on Jan. 19. The Edwards campaign said it had raised about 200,000 US dollar online in the first 24 hours after his win in South Carolina, and Dean's aides said they had raised about 400,000 on Thursday after his dramatic e-mail plea for help in Wisconsin. After making Wisconsin his prime target, Dean dropped plans to campaign Thursday in Detroit and headed to Milwaukee. Edwards and Clark already have decided to focus on Virginia and Tennessee and bypass the Michigan contest, which was expected to be a battleground until Kerry's surge put it out of reach. A new Reuters/MSNBC/Zogby poll found Kerry with a huge 47 percent to 10 percent lead over Dean in Michigan. No other candidate managed double digits in the state with 128 delegates at stake, the largest haul in the race so far. (Additional reporting by Patricia Wilson, Jeremy Pelofsky, David Alexander, Richard Cowan) **PHOTO CAPTION*** Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry (D-MA) boards his campaign plane in Bedford, Massachusetts February 5, 2004. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)