USTIN - Like students gathered for a class photo, the Republican governors of 28 states stood smiling in neat rows and made a final pitch yesterday for George W. Bush: Vote for him, he's one of us.
And, like students, there was an order to where everyone stood.
Way on one side of the second row was Governor Paul Cellucci of Massachusetts, a state no one expects Bush to win. As he and Governor John Rowland of Connecticut exchanged whispers, they were hidden in the shadow of Governor Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, a swing state, who got front-row billing alongside the only two women governors, Jane Hull of Arizona and Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey.
The positioning on stage, marked by white cards taped to the ground, suggested what some believe will happen if Bush wins the election: Republican governors who campaigned for Bush in important places will seek, and possibly get, important administration jobs. Which perhaps partly explained why all but one showed up in Austin yesterday, ready to kick off a ''Barnstorm Reform'' tour for Bush in 25 states over the next three days.
Cellucci, along with Governor Lincoln Almond of Rhode Island, has been assigned a tour of the Pacific Northwest and a mandate to push Bush's proposed $1.3 trillion tax cut. He, Almond, and Rowland arrived together yesterday morning on a private charter flight from Hartford paid for by the Bush campaign. Their mission over the next two days, Cellucci said, is to ''verify that what we have done in our states is what he's done in his state.''
The larger mission of the tour, which covers 23 states last won by Clinton, is to target the independent and undecided voters who have become the key to this election. But the hour-long event yesterday - a rare Sunday activity for Bush - also seemed designed to reinforce the idea that the Texas governor is simply popular, with dozens of colleagues eager to travel the nation on his behalf.
''I'm really proud to call them friends. I can't think of a better way to kick off the last two weeks of this campaign,'' Bush told reporters. ''It's going to be the good beginning of the final sprint, and I'm glad I'm sprinting with these good folks.
''Some campaigns tend to send out spokespeople. I'm sending out examples. Examples of people who know how to lead. Examples of people who have solved problems,'' Bush said.
Only one Republican governor, Cecil Underwood of West Virginia, was not present. He was at home, campaigning in a tight race for his current job.
The 28 others, unhampered by campaigns or their duties, arrived in the Texas capital and were divided into seven groups that will campaign across 17,286 miles covering 319 electoral votes. Cellucci and Almond are scheduled to visit a Boys & Girls club in Tucson, a retirement home in Washington state, and a business in Sacramento, in addition to meeting with local reporters and making guest appearances on radio talk shows.
Bush said the governors would emphasize three areas he hopes to overhaul: education, the budget, and the paired social programs of Social Security and Medicare. Repeating the word ''reform'' - a word that once defined his primary rival, Senator John S. McCain, whose former supporters Bush wants to woo - Bush said that ''all of us up here strongly believe we can do better as a nation.'' Bush urged the governors to describe their individual frustrations with the federal government and to send a ''collective message'' that ''the Clinton-Gore Administration has been ''the chief obstacle to reform in America.''
Cellucci, unable thus far to sell Bush to his home state, has been given the narrower task of selling the idea of a tax cut to voters in the Northwest and California. It's a concept he thinks people in those Democratic states may like.
''Even people in Massachusetts think the taxes are way too high,'' Cellucci said.
Cellucci could not explain why Massachusetts voters, while willing to elect a moderate Republican governor, seem so opposed to a Republican presidential candidate who has cast himself in the same light. Perhaps, he said, the Massachusetts electorate only favored him and Governor Bill Weld before him as ''a big check on the Democrats'' who had previously controlled the state.
He was firmer about his future plans. Asked whether he had contemplated a job in a Bush administration, Cellucci said: ''I haven't speculated, except to say I like the job I have.''
Motioning toward clusters of governors scattered about the room, he added: ''There's 29 other potential cabinet members here.''
