Bush hits the trail for GOP
Fast-paced schedule has president campaigning almost nonstop
URL: dallasnews.com.
10/29/2002
By G. ROBERT HILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News
ALAMOGORDO, N.M. – It's time to get out the vote again, and the stage was magnificently set Monday for President Bush to make his pitch beneath the ragged peaks of the Sacramento Mountains.
Facing a sea of tiny American flags and red and yellow pompoms – the state colors – the president touted one Republican for Congress and another for governor.
"A lot of people are on a seesaw – they don't know which way to go," said Eloise Gannop, a 79-year-old from Ruidoso who had come to cheer the president.
"This will help."
There is sameness to these events these days as the president barnstorms the country, campaigning for candidates who could secure the House and Senate for the GOP and win key gubernatorial races as well.
The White House calls the stops "welcomes." On Monday, it was the New Mexico Welcome and the Colorado Welcome. On Thursday, the welcomes will be in South Dakota, Indiana and West Virginia.
But this is the political season, and these carefully staged events are very much political rallies.
White House officials call them "cookie-cutter events," and they're now running three a day, financed by Republican funds. But much of the enormous cost of moving the president across the country – security, transportation and other logistics – is largely borne by the taxpayers.
Democrats have cried foul. And Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., among others, has urged the president to abandon the campaign trail and convene a bipartisan summit to deal with the nation's sagging economy – an issue that Democrats are convinced plays better for them.
Mr. Bush has ignored the calls and pressed on, rallying the Republican faithful and trying to convert Democrats and independents along the way.
"I'll tell you what gets converts," said Mr. Bush's chief political strategist, Karl Rove, a senior adviser in the White House. "Count how many cameras [are] there," he said at a twilight rally last week at Alabama's Auburn University, where Mr. Bush was the first president to visit since Franklin Roosevelt in 1939. "Then figure out how many are broadcasting on local TV and then get talked about at the coffee shop tomorrow."
Like a candidate
Though the president is not on the ballot, he's campaigning lately as if he were, trying to buck the historical trend that a president's party loses congressional seats in an off-year election.
In the week before the Nov. 5 elections, Mr. Bush plans to sweep through more than a dozen states, where his strategists believe he can boost fellow Republicans in tight races.
Monday in New Mexico, he campaigned for Steve Pearce for Congress and John Sanchez for governor, and later in Colorado for U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard, Gov. Bill Owens and several Republican congressional candidates.
Sunday night in Phoenix, he plugged Matt Salmon for governor and Rick Renzi for Congress in a star-spangled rally in the downtown Dodge Theater.
Local television coverage was extensive, with even the president's arrival aboard Air Force One carried live on a station or two. And Monday morning's front-page headline in The Arizona Republic captured the rally this way: "Bush sings Salmon praises."
"It draws attention to the election," Mr. Rove said, explaining the broad White House communications strategy. "It motivates people."
Mr. Bush, who's raised a record $145 million this year for the GOP, will be on the road from Thursday through election eve, paying particular attention next weekend to brother Jeb's bid for re-election as governor of Florida.
The president will finish his rounds Monday evening in Dallas, headlining an election-eve rally for the state GOP ticket.
He will spend the night before the election at his ranch near Crawford, Texas, vote in the morning, then return to Washington to monitor the returns at the White House.
"The elections are very important to the president ... to his agenda," said White House political director Ken Mehlman.
Although Republicans control the House by a handful of representatives, they lost the Senate last year when Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont abandoned the GOP and became an independent aligned with the Democrats. And for weeks now, Mr. Bush has railed against the Democratic-controlled Senate for thwarting his judicial nominees and holding up his proposal for a new Department of Homeland Security, among other issues.
"It's important that if we want to move on some of these issues to have Republican men and women elected to the Senate who share his values and his approach," Mr. Mehlman said.
But can the president, any president, really make a difference in the different races around the country?
Maybe. Maybe not. But analysts generally agree he can't hurt.
"He can boost Republican turnout," suggested Stuart Rothenberg, a political analyst who handicaps congressional races. And in a few places, that could be crucial, especially in close Senate races in Missouri, South Dakota, Iowa, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa and New Hampshire.
Minnesota
Minnesota is a targeted state as well. But the death Friday of Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone in a plane crash has stunned the state's voters, and White House strategists are scrambling to determine the best way to help Republican Norm Coleman in what they believe is still a competitive race.
Mr. Bush is tentatively scheduled to visit the state again and still may make it, depending on how the race is reshaped later this week.
His message, tailored politically for each stop, is a mix of politics, policy and old-fashioned patriotism. Often, when he broaches the prospect of war with Iraq, the heavily partisan audiences erupt into shouts of "USA! USA! USA!"
It happened again Sunday night in Phoenix, even as several hundred anti-war demonstrators marched outside the theater, shouting "Hey, hey, ho, ho. Bush's war has got to go."
"If there has to be war, then that's what will have to be," said Anna Curtis, a 66-year-old retired dental receptionist from nearby Mesa, Ariz., who had come to hear Mr. Bush. "I'm sure he will do everything in order to protect us."
Some Democrats have contended not subtly that Mr. Bush is pressing the possibility of war with Iraq to drown out the Democratic charges that he has been a poor steward of the nation's economy.
But Mr. Bush, though far from the historical highs after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, still enjoys solid support in the public opinion polls and has been spending some of that political capital to help his fellow Republicans.
"The public clearly has concerns about the economy," Mr. Mehlman said, "but those concerns are not necessarily being taken out on the public perceptions of the president." |
