Maine man helps form GOP plan Augusta delegate lends hand polishing platform

AUGUSTA – Hours after helping to polish portions of a 91-page proposed platform for next week’s Republican National Convention in New York, Mark Ellis hustled down to Wall Street on Friday and rang the bell to open trading at the New York State Exchange.

The 43-year-old Augusta resident is one of 21 delegates from Maine who will attend the convention at Madison Square Garden.

The proceedings will begin Monday and run through Thursday evening for the purpose of officially nominating President Bush as the party’s nominee.

Maine also will send 18 alternates to the convention center, which will be the official headquarters for 2,509 delegates and 2,344 alternates from across the country.

Friday morning, Ellis was among some of the conventioneers already in New York invited to participate in the opening ceremony at the New York Stock Exchange.

Standing beside Colorado Gov. Bill Owens and a convention delegate from New Mexico on the balcony at the NYSE, Ellis said the traders on the floor below were congregating in a kind of “surreal” mass of humanity.

Then he rang the bell to signal the NYSE opening at 9:30 a.m.

“I didn’t realize that darn bell was so loud,” Ellis said during a telephone interview later in the day. “It was right behind us and it darn near knocked my eyeballs out.”

Since Tuesday, Ellis and Jan Staples of Cape Elizabeth have been in New York as Maine’s contingent to a 110-member platform-writing team.

Ellis was involved in the aspects of the platform that dealt with terrorism and homeland security and then helped review the balance of the document late Wednesday and Thursday.

During the sessions, religious activists and like-minded delegates tried to tug an already conservative document farther to the right. At their urging, the party went beyond its unprecedented call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to go on record, too, as opposing all legal recognition of gay unions, including shared employee benefits.

They fell short in other areas, however, failing to put the party behind a complete ban on stem cell research, to alter leading principles on immigration, or to persuade the GOP to seek the elimination of family-planning programs for teens.

Despite a substantial conservative presence on the platform committee, the imperative was to avoid letting the platform go far off track from the policies President Bush is taking into the election.

The result is a platform that celebrates Bush’s leadership in the war on terrorism, touts his “ownership era” tax and investment policies and affirms the party’s commitment to socially conservative principles.

“We debated,” said Tennessee Sen. Bill Frist, platform chairman, when the hearings ended. “We occasionally argued. But we did it in a way … that brought us together.”

The platform goes to the floor of the RNC on Monday, where the committee will reassemble to pass it and the convention will ratify it.

Most of next week’s conventioneering will take place during the evening, when featured speakers will reach out to a national television audience to drive the GOP home to all American voters.

Organizers have enlisted the help of well-known moderates such as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to attract swing voters in what is expected to be a tight race between President Bush and Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee.

Although Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are two of the leading moderates in the Senate, organizers chose moderate speakers from states with more electoral votes and higher public profiles. The two Maine senators plan to host receptions for the state delegates during the week.

“California has a huge economy and has been turning things around and Giuliani has the prominence from September 11,” said Dwayne Bickford, Maine’s GOP executive director. “They’ve picked figures from a wide spectrum of the Republican party and those who represent a large section of voters from the East Coast to the West Coast.”

James Donnelly, a Brewer resident and former state GOP House floor leader, is among members of the Maine delegation who plan to make the most of their New York trip.

He has plans to visit the ground zero site of the former World Trade Center where four of his relatives were affected by the terrorist attack.

“All four gratefully survived,” Donnelly said. “It certainly brought it closer to home, so I plan to take the walking tour at the platform.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.