Cheering Bush backers are feeling a bit anxious over close contest

By Dean E. Murphy
The New York Times

PABLO MARTINEZ MONSIVAIS / AP Micheal Awada covers his face in campaign bumper stickers as he applauds President Bush yesterday at a campaign rally at the Target Center in Minneapolis.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — There is a good deal of nail-biting going on at the mostly picture-perfect campaign rallies held for President Bush.

Terry Buck, a first-grade teacher from Cleveland, feels the nervousness. So does Jim Nichols, a municipal purchasing officer from Saginaw, Mich. Both turned up last week at big events for the president. While they cheered endlessly, they also fretted some.

Buck and Nichols say the election is much too close. Bush should be trouncing John Kerry. Something is not quite right, and like many of their fellow Republicans, they share the belief that the media have played a role by skewing coverage in Kerry's favor.

For unsettled Republican voters in closely contested states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Hampshire, the last leg of the presidential contest at times has been more of a group-therapy session than a victory march.

In turning out by the thousands at airports, in stadiums, on farms and along roadsides — some waiting four or five hours for a chance to spend 40 minutes listening to the president — many Republican loyalists are seeking the strength and comfort that large numbers often bring.

Bush's visits are ticketed events overseen by local Republican officials.

But there's no panic

There is certainly no panic, Nichols says. Bush's supporters believe in him too much for that. Some of the loudest ovations come when the president predicts, as he almost always does in his speeches, "a great victory on Nov. 2."

But for every measure of hope there is some measure of anxiety gnawing at the adoring crowds that are shadowing the president the last days of his re-election campaign.

"I haven't talked to anybody who is not concerned," said Nichols, who took a day's vacation Thursday to see the president at a hockey rink in Saginaw.

The videotaped message by Osama bin Laden televised Friday heightened the uneasiness.

Linda Bentley, a real-estate agent who attended a Bush rally yesterday in Grand Rapids, Mich., said she was infuriated by bin Laden's interjection into the campaign. She also was a bit worried about it.

"He is trying to make the president look incompetent," Bentley said. "I just hope people will realize that he is trying to influence our democracy and our election."

Buck said the race's worrisome arithmetic was as plain as counting lawn signs on her way to a Bush rally that same day in Westlake, a suburb of Cleveland. Even on the front yards of Ohio, she lamented, Bush and Kerry seemed locked in a dead heat, something she and most of her Republican friends did not expect.

"I tell my husband that I feel like I am pregnant and I just want to birth this baby so that I can know who it is," Buck said. "My fear is that we will wake up Wednesday and we won't have a president."

There have been fireworks, confetti cannons and nonstop country music. One venue had a jumping castle for the children. The president barely can complete a sentence without being interrupted on queue by chants of "Four more years!"

But as some participants described it, the rallies also have become moments of calm reassurance — even a sense of renewal — in an election contest that can seem anything but calm and reassuring. While many walk away feeling better, they say their real hope is that Bush does the same.

"We are here for him," said Janet Pavlik, who endured three hours of traffic and security checks before seeing the president at a farm in Bucks County, Pa. "I already know I am voting for him. This is to show our support, for him to see our support, for everyone to see our support."

At the Silverdome in Pontiac, Mich., Larry Trybulec, a manager at a wholesale flower company, and his wife, Judy Roland, a middle-school art teacher, watched Bush address one of his biggest crowds of the week with binoculars from faraway seats in section 122. Trybulec said their attendance was a show of solidarity.

"I enjoyed telling people at work that I was coming," he said. "He is not going to convince anyone today, but for me personally it is important to be here."

Events meaningful

Even in crowds of many thousands, people said they felt drawn closer to Bush by the interaction.

Edmund Eisnaugle, a Niles, Ohio, physician who attended a Bush rally at an airport in nearby Vienna, said he appreciated the president's plain approach.

"He has softened his tone a lot and gotten a lot more personal," Eisnaugle said of the president. "He is really connecting with people. We are in a crisis in this country, and I really sense George Bush is the man who can bring us together."

Karl Rove, the presidential adviser, surveyed the scene one night at a farm in Bucks County, where thousands stood shoulder to shoulder on a plowed cornfield.

"He gets it," Rove said of the president. "It is really, really energizing. Think about this crowd. Almost everywhere we go it is wild."

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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