AUGUSTA – Maine Republicans, gathering Friday for a two-day state convention, spoke of breaking a Democratic stranglehold in Maine’s capital and adding to the GOP majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, but saved their most earnest pledges of support for President George W. Bush’s ticket-leading bid for re-election.

Featured speaker Andrew Card, Bush’s chief of staff, emphasized Bush’s role as commander in chief, as well as his respect for the office of president, during his dinner address to convention delegates and guests at the Augusta Civic Center.

Recounting scenes from Bush’s inauguration and the president’s response to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, Card told the audience: “His leadership is critical for our land. It’s critical for the world.”

Among those attending the convention dinner were U.S. Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, as well as former Gov. John McKernan.

Card’s words were echoed earlier by Maine party members.

“We have a strong team set up in Maine,” Maine Republican Party Chairwoman Kathy Watson told the first-day audience, linking GOP prospects for electoral success to the coordination between campaigns at the national, congressional and state level.

In Bush, she said, the party has an incumbent with a record of providing “steady leadership” and displaying “clear determination” in championing efforts to safeguard the nation and make its citizens more prosperous.

In her address several hours before Card’s keynote speech, Watson described Bush as a “capable and compassionate leader” who had responded to attacks from abroad by “taking the war right to the terrorists.”

In the process, she said, Bush had insisted on “common sense law enforcement” while he also “protected the basic freedom that we all cherish.”

Watson, making scant mention of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, additionally credited Bush tax policies for re-energizing the national economy.

Watson said Republican activists seeking victory in the fall should devote themselves to registering new voters, calling talk radio programs and writing letters to newspaper editors spelling out their views and spreading the party’s message door to door.

A key part of that message will include a basic party tenet – that Republicans must be elected to halt Democrats committed to “spending, spending, spending, spending,” she said.

In Maine’s presidential voting in November 2000, Democrat Al Gore beat Bush by 49.1 percent to 44 percent, with Green Independent Ralph Nader taking 5.7 percent.

A recent Associated Press review of public and private surveys as well as interviews with analysts in key states put Bush and Kerry in a virtual tie in their contest for state electoral votes.

A recent AP-Ipsos poll also suggested that the race was tied nationwide.

The two Republican candidates for Congress, Brian Hamel, a former Loring Development Authority president, and Charles Summers, a former U.S. Senate aide and former state senator, are both seeking to oust incumbent Democrats – Reps. Michael Michaud in the 2nd District and Tom Allen in the 1st District.

GOP organizers pegged their advance delegate count at about 1,600.

Maine Democrats meet for three days next weekend in Portland. The keynote speaker there, according to Maine Democratic Party Chairwoman Dorothy Melanson, will be Ann Lewis, the chairwoman of the Women’s Vote Center at the Democratic National Committee.