President to speak at R.I. event

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Advance teams from the White House and several Rhode Island Republican campaigns were busy Sunday preparing Quidnesset Country Club in North Kingstown for Monday’s visit by President Bush.

The campaign stop will be brief, spanning just a little more than two hours, and Bush will limit his visit to a reception and an outdoor luncheon before returning to their summer vacation home in Kennebunkport.

Later in the week, Bush is expected to attend campaign events for two Maine Republicans, Gov. John R. McKernan and 1st Congressional District candidate David F. Emery.

The Rhode Island stop is being squeezed into the flurry of activity that has accompanied the U.S. response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The president was scheduled to return to Washington Sunday for a meeting Monday with Energy Secretary James Watkins about the impact of the Persian Gulf crisis on U.S. energy supplies.

Bush also is scheduled to travel to Baltimore where he was to address the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention before taking a flight to Rhode Island.

At Quidnesset Country Club, the president is scheduled to attend a private $1,250-per-person reception for 200 people. He then will be escorted to an outdoor tent where he is scheduled to deliver a 14-minute speech to as many as 300 people paying $125 apiece.

Technically, the fund-raiser is to benefit the state Republican Party. “We’re going to be using it to support all of our statewide candidates,” said Norma Willis, head of the state party.

Gov. Edward D. DiPrete, seeking re-election, and Rep. Claudine Schneider, trying to topple incumbent Democratic Sen. Claiborne Pell, are the high-profile statewide Republicans expected to benefit most from the party’s unified campaign.

The president’s visit is an added highlight — at an unexpected bargain price — to an annual Republican gathering. Willis said the party each year holds a banquet or picnic late in the summer for what she calls the “GOP regulars.”

She had become worried this year because a little more than a month before it was scheduled, she had no speaker. George Bush Jr., the president’s son, had told the Rhode Island Republicans he would be unavailable.

“We tried everybody and their brother,” she said. Finally, she got a call from an official with the national party. “They said we’ve got a speaker for you, can you change the date?” For George Bush — the president, not the Texas baseball team owner — she changed the date.

But because the event already had been promoted as the annual summer get-together at $125 per ticket, people attending the luncheon ended up with a deal. When the president attended a fund-raiser at the governor’s Cranston home in November, they paid $1,250 each. They paid $250 a head to attend a Warwick rally for Schneider.