AUGUSTA – One-time presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has jumped on the John McCain bandwagon and told a cheering throng of Maine Republicans attending their state convention that he believed the party would retain its hold on the White House.

Romney, who won the party caucus in February before suspending his campaign a week later, told the 2,400 delegates gathered at the Augusta Civic Center for Friday night’s Presidential Banquet that the Arizona senator was the most experienced and tested candidate in the race and never was it more urgent for a person with those qualities to be called on to lead the country.

“We have to elect the man who has been tested and proven time and again,” Romney said.

Romney said the party had to unite behind McCain because both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did not have what was needed to do the job. He urged his supporters and those who supported the other candidates in the race to work together to succeed in the fall.

“We as Republicans have come together while the Democrats are out there battling each other,” he said. “Our party’s come together.”

He said America was faced with real challenges and that the party had the candidate best able to deal with war and a slumping economy.

“Radical, violent jihadists want to cause the collapse of all civilization. They want to conquer us militarily and economically,” he said. “I think they’re crazy, but they’re not stupid.”

On the domestic front, Romney said the Democrats want to raise taxes, cut down trade, regulate small business, oppose nuclear power, drilling for oil, mining for coal and building new power plants. He said they also were too concerned with civil liberties.

“Civil liberties are important, but the one we expect from government is to be kept alive,” Romney said to a loud ovation.

Romney said he had traveled the world as a businessman and was always struck by how one country could be successful while another next door was not. He said he determined that the answer was cultural in nature.

“What people believe, how they live their lives, what they value makes the difference,” he said. “What do Americans believe? We’re a family-oriented people … we’re a patriotic people and we’re a risk-taking people. We love opportunity.”

Romney’s name has been bandied about recently as a possible choice for vice president, but in a meeting with the press before his address he said the important issue was who topped the ticket. He said the American people were looking at the candidates for president, not for a running mate.

“I’m here to support his candidacy and not worry about the No. 2 position. Everyone is concerned about the No. 1 position,” he said. “America needs a strong leader. John McCain is the one who will stand tall as the proven leader.”

Earlier in the day, Republican candidates for the 1st and 2nd Congressional Districts received a rousing welcome when they addressed the delegates. With their campaign workers and supporters waving signs, banging thunder sticks and cheering wildly, each briefly outlined his position and thanked the gathering for the warm welcome.

Second district candidate John Frary, a retired college professor from Farmington, is unopposed in the party’s June primary and will square off against Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine, in the fall.

Wearing his trademark flat-brimmed black hat and escorted to the stage by flag-waving supporters, including one man carrying a sign reading ‘Impeach Ignorance,’ Frary poked fun at the Democrats and said he thought Michaud was a nice man but attracted to the failed policies of the 1960s.

“The Democrats and liberals were full of schemes for improving the United States,” he said. “All that optimism is gone, and it now comes down to this: ‘Government is a good thing, there ought to be more of it.'”

Frary described his ideology as “fidelity to the Constitution.”

Because the convention was running late and the floor needed to be cleared to prepare for the evening’s banquet, 1st District candidates Dean Scontras and Ruth Summers, who was representing her husband, Charles, had to cut their remarks short. In fact, the microphone was shut off during Scontras’ abbreviated speech, an action that drew a chorus of boos from his backers.

But in their prepared texts, Scontras and Summers explained their positions and asked for the support of the voters.

Scontras, an Eliot businessman who is making his first run for elective office, introduced his wife, Dawn, and their children Jack and Zoe and his parents Pete and Sophie and spoke of his Greek heritage. He quipped that in York County “you can’t throw a block of feta cheese without hitting a Scontras. I am proud of my family.”

Scontras went on to say that family was the “cornerstone” of his beliefs. He recalled watching his father leave for work at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard on foot each day with a lunch pail in his hand.

“The Maine I know, the Maine I was brought up in, was one of the rugged individualist where we understood the value of hard work, never spent more than we made. We cherished the values of family. We didn’t look to Hollywood, MTV or Washington, D.C., for heroes because they were there around the kitchen tables each night, stoic and heroic. Mainers, by our nature, have historically been conservative.”

Scontras described himself as a Ronald Reagan Republican and vowed to never bend his principals for political expediency. He said that like Reagan, he was a citizen candidate, an outsider. Unlike his opponent, Scontras said, he did not have the advantage of political connections or legislative relationships.

“This candidacy was not bestowed on me or encouraged by a member of the establishment,” he said. “To the contrary, I am earning it the old-fashioned way, in a way that should make every Mainer proud, through hard work, through the courage of my convictions.”

Running against Scontras in the June 10 primary is Scarborough resident and former state senator Summers. Both are vying to represent the party in the race to replace Democratic Rep. Tom Allen, who is stepping down to challenge two-term U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican.

For Summers it marks his third attempt to represent the district. Summers is a Navy lieutenant commander serving in Iraq and was represented at the podium by his wife, Ruth. A video was also shown of Summers dressed in combat gear in Iraq. Spliced in the video were appearances of prominent Maine Republicans offering him their endorsement.

“Because Charlie cannot be here to ask himself, I am asking for your support,” Ruth Summers said. “Vote for a proven leader, a proven public servant and perhaps more importantly, a decent honorable man.”

Summers said her husband just this week completed his nine-month tour of duty in Baghdad and would be back in Maine by the middle of the month.

“Charlie knows it’s time to put an end to the ‘tax-all-spend-all’ representation that we’ve had to endure from our current Congressman. He knows you can’t spend what you don’t have. Washington doesn’t need more of your hard earned tax dollars. It simply needs to spend them more wisely. He will fight to rein in out of control government spending.”

Summers said her husband understood the people of the 1st District and would work tirelessly on their behalf. She said he was committed to low taxes, reduced government spending and strong national defense.

“He will give you solutions instead of just pointing out problems,” she said.