Bush, McCain Team Up In Florida
One of President Bush's former political foes plans to campaign with him in Republican-friendly precincts of Florida.
Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, Mr. Bush's rival for the 2000 GOP presidential nomination, is tagging along Tuesday as the president campaigns in the Florida Panhandle where voters historically have elected Republicans or moderate Democrats.
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, on the western leg of a coast-to-coast campaign tour, is in another swing state, Nevada. Kerry is trying to exploit widespread local opposition to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site.
Me. Bush's pursuit of Florida's 27 electoral votes — one-tenth of what he needs to be re-elected — has taken him to cities across the state. But his 24th presidential trip to the state is to its western coastal region known as the Panhandle that backed him solidly in 2000.
An "Ask President Bush" event in Niceville, Fla., is sandwiched between two campaign rallies — one in Pensacola and the other in Panama City.
Neither Republicans nor Democrats want to see a repeat of the 2000 presidential election when Mr. Bush and Al Gore each got 48.8 percent of the vote, and the winning margin was just 537 votes.
But polls suggest Mr. Bush and Sen. Kerry are tied overall right now in Florida and the both men are blitzing the state with advertising.
In Las Vegas, meanwhile, Kerry met with a group of community leaders at a middle school, where he repeated his opposition to the Yucca Mountain site.
"One of the biggest environmental and security challenges facing Nevadans is the threat that Yucca Mountain will be turned into the nation's nuclear waste dump," Kerry said.
Mr. Bush supported Yucca Mountain, and Kerry hopes to use the issue to win in Nevada, where the two candidates are running neck and neck in recent polls.
Kerry campaigned in Arizona on Monday, where he said he would have voted to authorize the war in Iraq knowing what he does now, but added that he would have used the power more effectively than the current commander in chief.
Kerry said he hoped to begin reducing the number of U.S. forces in Iraq within six months of taking office if he is elected. "It is an appropriate goal to have," he said, but added that achieving it would depend on broader international assistance, better stability within Iraq and other related factors.
Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, is taking some time off. The North Carolina senator is at his beach house on Figure Eight Island for a weeklong working vacation.