ORMAL, Ill. - George W. Bush always says he wants to show the American public what's in his heart. Yesterday, a woman in Illinois returned the favor, showing what was on a somewhat more personal body part.
As his campaign train slowed down to pass through the town of Odell yesterday, a woman on the side of the road pulled down her pants. Her buttocks faced the train with this message written on them: ''Raise the Minimum Wage.''
Bush spotted her immediately.
''Congratulations, you know you just got yourself on national TV?'' Bush, consumed with laughter, said over the loudspeaker from a platform on the final car, where he stood waving at supporters.
''You're ... right,'' the woman shouted.
Wearing a huge grin, Bush turned to the news cameras. ''Did you get that?'' he asked as the train rolled away.
The incident constituted news on an otherwise routine day of campaigning for the governor of Texas, who finished a three-day tour in Springfield last night before flying home to Austin. He is planning to embark on another tour Wednesday, flying to California for two days before holding events in Washington state and Oregon. On Saturday, Bush is expected to visit the Arizona ranch of a former rival, Senator John S. McCain, who also will be with him on the campaign trail this week. Bush's running mate, Dick Cheney, returned home to Dallas last night.
Traveling through Democratic and politically divided regions of Illinois yesterday, Bush for a second day in a row appealed to so-called Reagan Democrats, a conservative bloc that switched to the Republican Party to support Ronald Reagan. In Joliet, a mostly Democratic and Catholic town 60 miles outside Chicago, Bush spotted a union worker holding a sign in the crowd and said: ''We welcome you to this camp. We know you're a hard-working man.''
Referring to the federal budget surplus, Bush continued: ''We want to share some of that money with you. We want to say, the harder you work, the more money you have. Listen, it's conservative to cut taxes. It is compassionate to give people their own money back, so you can save, and you can dream, and you can build for your families.''
The appeal is central to the Bush strategy, which is to focus on battleground states that voted Democratically in the last few presidential elections. Illinois, which favored Clinton in 1992 and 1996, last voted for a Republican candidate when Bush's father, then-Vice President George Bush, was on the ticket.
A Chicago Tribune poll of 900 voters taken the week before the Republican convention showed Bush trailing Gore by two points in Illinois. But the result was within the three-point margin of error and did not reflect an expected post-convention ''bounce'' that has appeared in national polls since Friday.
Bush also referred again to the marriage penalty tax, in which some married couples pay more than they would if they were single. President Clinton vetoed a bill to eliminate the marriage penalty Saturday. Yesterday, standing alongside Representative Gerald C. Weller, the Illinois Republican who helped promote the bill, Bush scolded the administration. ''We ought to stand on the side of families,'' Bush said.
Cheney, who has been playing a limited role on the stump, introducing Bush in two minutes or so, also garnered more attention than usual. US House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert told the crowd that Cheney will be a ''valuable partner'' in the campaign and reminded the audience that he served alongside Cheney in the House.
But the highlight of the day was, without question, the woman who wanted her message to be seen. Aides giggled about the event for hours afterward.
For the record, Bush aides said, Bush is in favor of raising the minimum wage as long as there is flexibility in the plan so that less-affluent states can opt out.
