US ELECTIONS: Republicans believe New Jersey has come into play, reports Conor O'Clery in Medford.
New Jersey is supposed to be Democratic territory. Al Gore won it by 16 points four years ago. So what was Dick Cheney doing in the Garden State yesterday, addressing a rally at a high school in Medford in the prosperous southern county of Burlington? Neither the President or Vice President has campaigned before in New Jersey, preferring to make multiple visits to real battleground states like Pennsylvania and Ohio. The crowd queuing to get into Lenape School gymnasium yesterday morning had no doubt however why Mr Cheney was coming.
New Jersey they believe has come into play. Bret Schundler, former Republican Mayor of Jersey City, told me that winning the state was now part of Republican strategy. Their latest poll showed Mr Kerry only three points ahead. A controversy surrounding Democratic Governor James McGreevey - he announced he had a gay affair and resigned - had helped. But the big issue that could swing it for the Republican ticket was security, said Mr Schundler. The state suffered terribly in the 9/11 attack and Jersey City lost 40 residents in the collapse of the twin towers, he said. "We want a president who stays on the offensive, we don't want to be fighting the terrorists in New Jersey. A lot of people think like that." Tom Wilson, the Bush-Cheney communications director for New Jersey echoed the theme. "Nobody was more affected than New Jersey by 9/11," he said.
"Two weeks ago we started to get increased interest from the national campaign and they arranged for Cheney to visit." With the Philadelphia suburbs just a few miles away, the Cheney visit would also make the media market in Pennsylvania, he added. It was no surprise therefore that everything about the mid-morning event was aimed at promoting the Bush administration's post-9/11 toughness.
A phalanx of traffic cops wearing t-shirts proclaiming "Troopers for Bush" formed a backdrop for the speakers. Posters handed to participants - many of them employees of local defence contractor Lockheed Martin - read: "Law Enforcement for Bush". Bernard Kerik, New York police chief at the time of the 9/11 attacks, was given the stage to recall President George Bush's visit to Ground Zero "where I felt his heart". Mr Kerik lambasted Mr Kerry as someone who vacillated too much to be trusted with the war on terror. He mocked a comment made by the Democratic challenger in a New York Times magazine interview on Sunday comparing terrorism to a nuisance like gambling and prostitution. "I lost 23 police officers on 9/11," he said. "A nuisance didn't do that." The Republican message of the day was clearly to hit Kerry on this quotation, which I heard being dissected on conservative talk radio while driving to Medford and which has been rushed into a new Republican ad asking: "How can Kerry protect us when he doesn't understand the threat?" In the interview Mr Kerry actually said America had to get back "to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance," and where terrorism was reduced like prostitution, gambling and organised crime to the point where "it's not threatening the fabric of your life." He was explaining the difference between his concept of international cooperation to combat terrorism and Mr Bush's idea of endless global war. Mr Cheney took up the "nuisance" comment in his speech, evoking a chorus of derisory boos. "This is naive and dangerous," he told the capacity crowd of over 1,000. "This is all part of a pre-9/11 mind set, and it is a view we cannot go back to." The enemy they faced was "every bit as intent on destroying us as were the Axis powers in World War II." The New Jersey Republicans roared their approval when Mr Cheney went on: "We are confronting the terrorists with our military, so we do not have to fight them with armies of firefighters, police and medical personnel on the streets of our own cities." The Vice President accused Mr Kerry of turning against the Iraq war last year only because Howard Dean was surging in the Democratic primaries. "If Senator Kerry can't stand up to the pressures posed by Howard Dean," he asked, "how can we expect him to stand up to the al-Qaeda?" As the Republicans streamed out of the school grounds they were jeered by up to 100 Kerry supporters, one dressed as Pinocchio, holding placards with slogans such as "Bush Lies, People Die" and "No war for Haliburton".
Mr Dean's former state organiser, Mike Beson, was among them. "I'm glad the Bush-Cheney campaign is wasting their time here, because we're going to win," he said. As the Vice President's limousine flashed by, and the protesters shouted, "Don't come back", he asserted, "The visit has also energised our base. They didn't think of that."