Eye On Finish Line

Just four days left until Election Day and the campaigning is shifting into overdrive as both parties mount their final assaults in a race that will decide control of Congress and scores of statehouses.

President Bush continues his relentless drive toward Tuesday's midterm elections with visits to rally Republican crowds in two Northeastern states and Kentucky on Friday.

His day starts less than 12 hours after he returned to Washington from another grueling three-state swing on behalf of GOP hopefuls. That trip took the president from the snow-dusted frigid flatlands of South Dakota to West Virginia's autumn leaf-tinged mountains.

In South Dakota, Mr. Bush stumped for Congressman John Thune, who's bidding to oust Democratic Senator Tim Johnson in one of this year's marquee match-ups. Pundits have called it a "proxy war" between Bush and Daschle.

Mr. Bush personally lobbied Thune to run for the Senate in hopes of defeating Johnson, erasing the Democrat's one-vote majority and throwing Daschle from the Senate majority leader's office. But the race, like scores of others across the nation, is tight.

"The president thinks that if there was a different Senate, much more could be done for America," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

The high-profile campaigning aside, CBS News Chief White House Correspondent John Roberts reports the latest polls suggest Democrats will retain the Senate and Republicans the House. But there could be big upsets on the state level.

Meantime, the White House announced the president will campaign Sunday in Minneapolis for GOP Senate candidate Norm Coleman.

Former Vice President Walter Mondale became Coleman's foe earlier in the week when Democrats named him to replace Senator Paul Wellstone, who died in a plane crash last week.

Mondale officially kicked off his campaign on Wednesday, setting up a race against the former St. Paul mayor. Coleman was hand-picked by the White House to run against Wellstone.

"In these few remaining days, and how few they are, Joan and I will travel our state," Mondale said as he accepted Minnesota Democrats' nomination Wednesday night. "I'm asking everyone who's listening to us tonight: Please give us your help."

Mondale is touting his previous experience in the Senate, saying he knows how to be effective because he's been there and helped write the rules.

He pledges to run a civil campaign against Coleman. And he acknowledges that some people may have gone over the line at Tuesday's memorial service for Wellstone, which Republicans complained was too partisan.

Mondale has inherited the slight lead Wellstone had recently opened over Coleman, according to a poll of 639 likely voters released Wednesday by the Star Tribune of Minneapolis. Mondale had 47 percent support to Coleman's 39 percent, according to the poll, which has a margin of sampling error of 4 percentage points.

After a record-shattering year of fund-raising, President Bush intends to hit the road every day until Tuesday's elections.

Even at the White House, amid tense negotiations with allies over potential war with Iraq, the president found time for politics. He strode into the stately East Room on Wednesday and accused Democratic senators of ringing up a "lousy record" on judicial nominations.

For weeks, Mr. Bush has made an issue out of Democratic reluctance to confirm his judicial nominees. He sought to bolster that argument by announcing a plan to hasten the confirmation process, though even White House aides acknowledged the proposal has little chance of being adopted.

Democrats, who balk at the president's conservative judicial choices, have accused him of trying to create "a partisan campaign issue."

Democrats howled, too, at the site of a white tent set up on the rain-slicked White House driveway Wednesday.

Inside the big top, conservative talk radio hosts opened their microphones to a stream of top administration officials who offered the president's election-season take on the issues.

Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Jennifer Palmieri called it "appease-the-right-wing-day" at the White House.

Mr. Bush hopes to break tradition and make midterm gains that deliver full control of Congress to the GOP, lowering Democratic roadblocks to his tax, homeland security, judicial and health care policies.

House Democrats, eight years out of power, need to gain seven seats to be assured of control. The Senate breakdown is 49 Republicans, 49 Democrats, one independent and one vacancy - created by Wellstone's death.

Republicans account for 27 governors, to 21 for Democrats and two independents. Democrats expect to trim or even erase the GOP advantage in statehouses.

The party in power in the White House has lost House seats at every midterm election except three since Abraham Lincoln was president, and last gained Senate seats at a midterm election in 1982.

"The White House would like to defy history this year," Fleischer said.

Without knowing how Republicans will fare, the spokesman was reluctant to call the election a mandate on the president's agenda.

"In some places it's going to be a reflection of local circumstances, in others it may be a reflection of the president's message," Fleischer said.

South Dakota is political ground zero this election season. Beside the Johnson-Thune race, Gov. Bill Janklow is in a tight contest against Democrat Stephanie Herseth for a House seat.

In Indiana, businessman Chris Chocola is battling former Democratic Rep. Jill Long Thompson in a House race. Democratic Rep. Julia Carson hopes to hold off a late GOP offensive in Indianapolis.

Later Thursday, Mr. Bush went to West Virginia, where GOP Rep. Shelley Moore Capito is a narrow favorite in a rematch with Jim Humphreys.

The state's five electoral votes will be hotly contested in Mr. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.