SACO – With a collective shout they hoped could be heard all the way to the White House, Maine Democrats responded with an approving roar to campaign speeches offered Saturday night by two of the party’s leading presidential contenders.

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Massachusetts U.S. Sen. John Kerry greeted more than 500 members of the party faithful at the Cascades Inn in Saco. Some dished out as much as $500 per plate for the Maine Democratic Party’s annual fund-raiser known as the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner.

Perceived in some polls as the front-runners in a crowded field of Democratic primary entrants that includes retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark, Connecticut U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Ohio U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, Missouri U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt, North Carolina U.S. Sen. John Edwards and others, Dean and Kerry whipped up the crowd with an unrelenting assault on the leadership and policies exemplified by President Bush.

Both men, however, were careful not to criticize each other at the Maine event that signals the beginning of the 2004 presidential campaign in the state. For many local Democrats, it was a welcome respite from the backbiting repartee the two New England candidates engaged in over the last several days.

Friday’s New York Times quoted Kerry as saying Dean “moves faster, in more different directions [and] tells more stories than anyone I’ve ever met in politics.”

That same day, The Boston Globe quoted Dean’s spokeswoman, Tricia Enright, who said, “To borrow a phrase from John Kerry’s favorite philosopher, Yogi Berra, when John Kerry saw the fork in the low-road, he took it.”

The two candidates saved their venom for Bush, assailing his and his administration’s perceived failures in a number of areas, particularly the national economy, health care, international terrorism and the continued occupation of Iraq.

The Economy

Noting that the president was happy to see the nation’s unemployment rate decline to 6 percent, Dean emphasized Bush still has 3 million jobs to go before he can drop unemployment rates to where they were when President Clinton left office. Repeating his signature phrase of “we can do better than this,” Dean said skyrocketing college tuition and property taxes quickly consumed the tax break Bush delivered early in his presidency. He said the next president must provide jobs and a balanced budget that will encourage people to invest in America.

“I think that most Americans would be glad to pay the same taxes that we paid when Bill Clinton was president if only we could have the same economy we had when Bill Clinton was president,” Dean said.

Noting that 17,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Maine, Kerry said that with 3 million people without jobs across the country, it is not uncommon to see workers giving up. He said one man he spoke with had been out of work for more than a year and a half while another worker, a single mother of two, struggled to survive on $12,000 a year. Meanwhile, Kerry said Bush continues a policy of “trickle-down economics” and tax policies that allow companies to take their jobs overseas.

“All across the country there’s a trail of devastation. You see it and we see it, and all across our country there is evidence of why this is the beginning of the end of the Bush presidency,” Kerry said.

Health care

Dean gave credit to Gov. John E. Baldacci for launching the Dirigo Health Care initiative to expand health care to many uninsured Mainers. He cited the progress of his home state of Vermont where everyone under 18 has health insurance, all those under 150 percent of federal poverty levels have health insurance, and one-third of seniors have prescription drug benefits. Dean promised to do the same for the nation if elected president.

“If we can do that in a small rural state – the 26th in income in the country – and still balance the budget, surely the most wealthy and powerful society on the face of the Earth can join the British and the French, the Germans, the Japanese, the Irish and the Italians, the Israelis, the Canadians, the Dutch, the Danes, the Norwegians, the Swedes – even the Costa Ricans have health insurance for their people,” Dean said, “and so should we.”

Kerry said that although many American families are earning more, the escalating cost of health insurance is eating up any economic progress workers might have experienced. On the goal of national health care, he sent a message similar to Dean’s.

“The richest country on the face of the planet has to stop being the only industrial nation on the face of the planet not to recognize that health care is not a privilege – it’s a right and we’re going to make it available to every single American,” he said.

Iraq

Although he supported the 1991 Gulf War, Dean said Bush had created a pattern of mistrust by telling Americans that al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein were allies and that the Iraqi leader had a hand in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He said Bush wanted Americans to believe Iraq was buying uranium from Africa, that it was about to obtain nuclear weapons and that the administration knew exactly where Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were. In the end, Dean said there was “no evidence” of any of the president’s pretext for waging war against the oil-rich country.

“My job as commander-in-chief of the U.S. military will never be to send our sons and daughters and our grandchildren and our brothers and sisters to a foreign country to fight without first telling the American people the truth about why it is that we’re going there,” Dean said.

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran who later became an anti-war activist, said America needs a president who can look the parents of a fatally wounded soldier in the eyes and honestly tell them that while everything possible was attempted to avoid the loss, “the threat was so great we had no choice.”

“This president fails that test miserably in Iraq and has taken us to a more dangerous place,” Kerry said. “This president has made the world less safe and America less safe.”

Republicans argued that the Democratic candidates would fare better with Maine voters by proposing successful remedies instead of bashing the president.

“If Howard Dean and John Kerry want to meet with success in Maine, they should look for a lesson in the three mayoral races won by Republicans in Maine this week – races that were won by attacking problems, not political opponents,” said Peter Cianchette, chairman of Bush’s re-election campaign in Maine. “By offering positive visions and solutions to problems, these candidates motivated the grass roots and turned out their voters for all the right reasons.”