Giuliani touts Bush in 2nd District

BREWER – Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Sen. George Mitchell landed in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District on Thursday in hopes of tipping what polls show to be a tight race for the presidency here.

Giuliani, the Bush campaign’s top surrogate, came to this GOP-leaning city to tout the president’s record of fighting terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on his city and questioned Democrat John Kerry’s willingness to fight terrorists abroad.

“We need a president … that can see the final result,” Giuliani told the 400 people who came to the town hall forum at the Brewer Auditorium. “George Bush can see the final result, the end of global terror.”

The Brewer stop came just hours after Giuliani appeared on NBC’s Today show during which he questioned criticism of the Bush administration that followed news reports about 380 tons of conventional explosives disappearing from a complex south of Baghdad.

“No matter how you try to blame it on the president, the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there,” Giuliani said during the Today show interview. “Did they search carefully enough? Didn’t they search carefully enough?”

The statement elicited a quick response from the Kerry campaign, which accused Giuliani of using the troops as a scapegoat for the failures of the Bush administration.

At the Brewer event, Giuliani amended his statement, praising the troops for securing 400,000 tons of explosives while in Iraq, noting that the missing explosives accounted for less than 1 percent of the total.

“Of course, [the president] gets the ultimate responsibility, but it’s the troops who are the ones on the ground … and I think they’ve done a heck of a job,” Giuliani said.

Giuliani’s visit comes just days after a Zogby International poll showed the Kerry-Edwards ticket has a sizable lead in the statewide contest. However, the race is within the poll’s margin of error in the northern district, which can award its winner one of the state’s four Electoral College votes.

With predictions of a close race nationwide, both camps recognize the potential importance of every such vote. While Kerry and Bush are spending much of their time in more populated swing states including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, both campaigns have several high profile visits planned for northern Maine in the waning days of the campaign.

“All eyes are on the state of Maine,” Peter Cianchette, chairman of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Maine, told the crowd. “We can make a difference and cast the deciding vote, or better yet the four deciding votes.”

The Kerry campaign upped the ante Thursday, announcing it would send vice presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards back to the 2nd district Saturday to headline a rally in downtown Bangor.

Andrew Card, Bush’s White House Chief of Staff, will attend functions today in Caribou, Ellsworth and Waterville, and Republican Gov. George Pataki of New York will stump for the president Sunday at as yet undetermined locations in Maine.

On Thursday, former Sen. George Mitchell appeared at rallies in Waterville and Lewiston to boost the Democratic ticket. After the Lewiston event, he chastised the president for exploiting voters’ concerns about future terrorist attacks.

“It’s quite clear the Bush campaign has come down to one word: fear,” Mitchell said in an interview with the Bangor Daily News. “By contrast, if you reduce the Kerry campaign to one word, it’s hope – hope America can be safer at home and more respected abroad.”

Mitchell, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1980 to 1995, questioned Bush’s ability to effectively combat terrorism without international cooperation. The proof of the president’s failures abroad, Mitchell said, lies in his own account that the al-Qaida terrorist network operates in 60 countries. However, there have been major arrests in only six foreign cities, Mitchell said.

“It is essential that in the war on terror, we have the cooperation in intelligence and effective police work in other countries,” said Mitchell, adding he feels Kerry could do a better job building such alliances.