CHOOLCRAFT, Mich. - The road from here for the Bush-Cheney campaign is one well-trodden with Democratic footprints.
Fresh from the Republican National Convention, the GOP ticket of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney rolled through this Rust Belt state yesterday as part of a multipronged strategy to defeat Al Gore in states - and with tactics and themes - that have been winners for Democrats in recent elections.
In each state, the bounty is so-called swing voters, independents and moderates who are expected to vote Nov. 7 on the basis of a candidate more than his party.
''This isn't just a Republican message. Ours is a message that speaks to working people from all walks of life,'' Bush told a crowd of more than 1,000 gathered in Durand as part of a pitch to union members, a traditionally Democratic bloc.
GOP and Bush campaign strategists say their plan for gathering the 270 electoral votes needed to elect a president includes having the candidates themselves concentrate on a band of six swing states running from New Jersey through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Missouri. By air and rail, the ticket will visit all those states but New Jersey and Missouri by the end of today.
Bush rode into last week's convention in Philadelphia after visits to Arkansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, all of which have voted Democratic in recent presidential elections. He and Cheney plan more visits there and in Louisiana and Florida, which have also gone Democratic. Florida, where Bush's brother Jeb is governor, has 25 electoral votes.
In addition, Bush will take Arizona Senator John S. McCain with him this week to California, which has the mother lode of 54 electoral votes. Building off the cross-party appeal of McCain's reformist message, Bush and Cheney plan to campaign up and down the West Coast, and raise money not only for themselves but for Republican House and Senate candidates.
Third, the campaign will build off the $67.7 million it received from the federal government for the general election campaign with financial support from the Republican National Committee. It is trying to stock its ''Victory 2000'' fund with more than $100 million.
Half of the money will be spent on party TV ads benefiting the ticket. The rest will be dedicated to grass-roots organizing and turn-out-the-vote efforts that it hopes will rival those put on by organized labor and the law enforcement community, which have been rallying to Democratic causes.
''I think the foot soldiers may be marching in a different direction this time around, and they may be marching for Republican candidates,'' said RNC spokesman Mark Pfeifle. He noted the presence in Philadelphia last week of James P. Hoffa, head of the Teamsters union.
Yet more than anything, the Republicans hope to regain the White House with a thematic appeal aimed at scratching an itch that voters feel in both good times and bad.
In 1992, Gore and Bill Clinton satisfied the urge by portraying President Bush as part of a tired, 12-year-old Republican administration that hadn't changed since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981. The ouster of Bush's father was stunning considering his 90-plus percent approval rating following the Persian Gulf War only 21 months earlier.
It helped the Democrats that the country was in the midst of an economic slowdown in the summer of 1992. But now, even amid unprecedented prosperity and widespread contentment, usually factors for maintaining the status quo, Bush will make the same argument that elected Clinton eight years ago.
In the clearest of terms and on the most prominent of political stages, Bush made his pitch Thursday night in his speech accepting the GOP presidential nomination.
''They have not led. We will,'' he thundered in the signature phrase of his 52-minute address.
The night before, Cheney appropriated Gore's famous chant from his 1992 speech accepting the Democratic vice presidential nomination. ''It's time for them to go,'' Cheney said in accepting the GOP nomination.
Republicans believe the argument will have even more resonance should Gore choose Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry as his running mate.
Gore, who will accept the Democratic presidential nomination on Aug. 17, is set to announce his selection Tuesday. Yesterday, Kerry flew to Washington from his vacation home in Idaho; today he plans to return to Boston. Kerry and his staff had no comment on the vice presidential choice, but there was continuing buzz he remained among four to six, and possibly seven, choices.
If Gore picks Kerry, the Republicans are expected to immediately label him ''another Massachusetts liberal'' and ''Mike Dukakis's lieutenant governor,'' the strategist said. Kerry was lieutenant governor under former governor Michael S. Dukakis, whom Bush's father defeated in the 1988 election.
According to Karl Rove, the Bush campaign's senior strategist, the state Republican parties have a more prominent role in the election strategy than in past years.
Through mailings, phone call, e-mail distribution and rallies, state parties are being charged with building grass-roots support for the ticket.
While it will be run at the local level, the effort will be closely watched by Bush campaign officials back in Austin, Texas. The campaign has exerted great pressure on state parties to turn out on behalf of Bush, and analyzes their progress every week.
''Literally, we are saying to state Republican parties, if you want George W. Bush or Dick Cheney or a Bush surrogate to appear at your fund-raiser, we better have come to a mutual agreement as to what our goals are and how we're going to execute them,'' Rove said in an interview Friday.
Rove said Bush officials have met with leaders of the more than 20 so-called ''battleground'' states over the last three months to put those guidelines to paper and decide how they will be financed.
The strategist also said he expected four key states, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Missouri, to remain battlegrounds until Election Day. At the very least, he said, it would be another four to five weeks until the campaign could determine which way they were leaning.
He described California and Florida as ''late-deciding'' states, whose voting preference would not become clear until mid- to late-October, after the first presidential debate.
Nationwide, the campaign has mapped out its advertising strategy through November. But Rove declined to describe it, and said the plans were subject to change.
One area of the country appeared to be something of a lower priority for Bush: New England. Rove said three states, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, appeared to be leaning toward Bush. Connecticut is also in play, Rove said.
In general, the campaign is casting a wide net, relying on the harmonious image coming out of the Republican convention to attract support anywhere possible.
Kornblut reported from Michigan; Johnson reported from Washington.
