Lamar Alexander and Sen. Richard Lugar were casualties of Tuesday's primaries.

Alexander met with advisers Tuesday night in Clearwater, Fla., and began calling key supporters and contributors to tell them he had decided to quit the race without waiting for next week's voting across the South.

Lugar, after making his best showing of the year by finishing fourth in Vermont, will make his formal withdrawal announcement at a Capitol Hill news conference, and Alexander will do the same in Nashville, Tenn.

After finishing third in Iowa and New Hampshire, Alexander had hoped to exploit his status as a Southern favorite son in the current wave of Dixie primaries. But after limping to a fourth-place finish in South Carolina and barely edging Forbes for third in Georgia, the regional appeal he was counting on appeared to be as thin as his remaining financial reserves.

Alexander, 55, served as Tennessee governor from 1979 to 1986 and was President George Bush's secretary of education from 1990 to 1992.

Lugar, too, read the election returns. He told aides he planned to quit the contest Wednesday after Bob Dole beat him in the Vermont primary Tuesday, GOP sources in Washington and Indiana said.

Lugar, 63, never cracked the top four places in the primaries and rarely got more than a few percentage points of the vote.

Earlier Tuesday, Lugar told reporters in Vermont he was realistic and would not remain in the race if he did not win somewhere. "I have no Don Quixote idea here of competing endlessly with no prospects," he said.

Lugar has served in the U.S. Senate since 1977.

Buchanan To Go On

In Buffalo, N.Y., Pat Buchanan vowed Tuesday to take his views on immigration, trade and abortion all the way to the Republican National Convention, despite Dole's sweep Tuesday.

"We're going to try to make the Republican Party reflect in its platform, and in both its nominees, the ideas and issues that animate our campaign and in which we believe so deeply," Buchanan said.

Buchanan's sister and campaign chair, Bay Buchanan, heatedly rejected a suggestion that Dole and her brother offered similar visions.

"No sir, your man does not represent the Buchanan brigade," she told Dole's New York state chairman, Gov. George Pataki, on CNN's "Crossfire."

Buchanan cast the primary voting as more than a nomination race, suggesting he'd press on in order to collect delegates - and muscle - for influencing the summer convention in San Diego.

"It's about more than me, it's about a great cause," he told the rally of about 1,000 enthusiasts in a downtown Buffalo hotel. …