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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: LindyBill who wrote (36044)	3/22/2004 11:34:02 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793690

Bush brings campaign to NH By JOHN DiSTASO Senior Political Reporter - Union Leader President George W. Bush will make his second visit to New Hampshire in less than two months next Thursday, the White House said yesterday. Republican sources said Bush is expected to visit New Hampshire Community Technical College in Nashua for a speech or discussion focusing on the economy and touching on a variety of issues. White House spokesman Ken Lisaius said the location of Bush’s visit has not been formally announced. But he did confirm, “The President will be in New Hampshire on Thursday to discuss matters pertaining to the economy and owning your own business.” He was unsure if the event will be a speech or if it will be a “conversation” with Granite Staters similar to the event Bush hosted at Fidelity Investments in Merrimack on Jan. 29. The Bush visit was first reported on www.theunionleader.com Web site early yesterday afternoon. The visit will be dubbed official business, meaning that it will be taxpayer-funded. Later that evening, Bush is expected to travel to Boston for a $2,000-a-person campaign fund-raiser at the Park Plaza Hotel. Lisaius said that “anything political will be paid for by the campaign.” But details of how the costs of the two-pronged visit will be divided were unclear yesterday. Word of Bush’s expected arrival came as a new poll was released showing the President with a slim lead over presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry in New Hampshire. According to the American Research Group of Manchester, Bush leads Kerry 45 to 39 percent, with independent Ralph Nader at 8 percent and 8 percent undecided. The poll of 463 registered voters taken March 15-18 has a margin of error of 4.6 percent. Nader hurts Kerry more than Bush, the polls showed. Head-to-head, without Nader, Bush and Kerry are in a statistical tie, with Bush at 47 percent and Kerry at 45 percent. A month ago, a University of New Hampshire Survey Center poll showed Bush trailing Kerry, 53 to 38 percent. But American Research Group pollster Dick Bennett said Bush has not entirely turned the corner here. “For a Republican sitting President in New Hampshire, these are not great numbers,” Bennett said. Bush is becoming a frequent visitor to the Granite State, which has been targeted by both major political parties as one of about 17 battleground states that will swing the general election in November. In 2000, Bush won the state’s four electoral votes by a razor-thin, 7,200-vote margin. State Republican activists are quick to point out that had New Hampshire swung for Al Gore, the former vice president — and not Bush — would have won the election regardless of the historic developments in Florida. New Hampshire had been a solid Republican state in Presidential elections until Democrat Bill Clinton defeated the current President’s father in 1992. Clinton repeated a New Hampshire victory in 1996. Prior to 1992, the state had not favored a Democrat in a Presidential election since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. New Hampshire has already been targeted by the Bush-Cheney ‘04 campaign for general election television advertising. Also targeting the state for television ads have been the liberals groups The Media Fund and MoveOn.org. The anti-Bush group America Coming Together is targeting 17 states, including New Hampshire, for grassroots organizing and has had an office in Manchester since December. Bush’s visited New Hampshire on Jan. 29, just two days after the state’s first-in-the-nation Presidential primary. At Fidelity, Bush countered months of criticism Granite Staters had been hearing from the Democrats who had been bidding for their party’s Presidential nomination. The President touted his tax-cut plan and said the economy was rebounding after dipping in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Bush also visited New Hampshire last October, just as the Democratic Presidential primary race was heating up. During that visit to Manchester, Bush defended his decision to invade Iraq. Walsh said she hoped Bush will “finally takes the time to meet with the many New Hampshire citizens who have lost their jobs because of his failed economic leadership or the many New Hampshire citizens hurt by his budget cuts, but I’m not going to count on it. Unfortunately, this trip is likely to be just another carefully staged photo opportunity, designed mostly to force taxpayers to pick up some of the costs of his Boston fund-raiser.” Walsh said she was confident Kerry will visit New Hampshire, but she said no date has been set. Pollster Bennett said the Bush-Kerry numbers show traditional New Hampshire trends. Each candidate runs strong among his own party faithful. Independents comprise the wild card. Head-to-head, without Nader, independents are split 43 to 43 percent between Bush and Kerry with 14 percent undecided. But when Nader is added to the equation, he receives 10 percent of the independent vote, with Bush at 43 percent and Kerry at 33 percent. Bennett believes Kerry is a key reason Bush is focusing on the southern tier of the state in the upcoming visit and his January visit. “When you draw a line east to west through Merrimack, everything below that line was very heavily for Kerry in the primary,” he said. “If I were Bush, I’d be concerned about those voters because they tend to look south” and consider Kerry a neighbor. But Republican strategist Tom Rath had a different assessment. He said that Bush’s stop in Nashua “is not related to John Kerry.” He said it is simply convenient for Bush to travel from Nashua to the Boston fund-raiser that night. “In the last election, it wasn’t a guy from Massachusetts and it was close,” Rath said. “For Kerry, the Massachusetts connection is a blessing and a curse at the same time. There are a lot of southern New Hampshire people who moved here because they didn’t want the kind of government that John Kerry epitomizes.”