Bush tries to solidify GOP in Midwest

WASHINGTON — House control at stake, President Bush campaigned Sunday in endangered Republican districts across GOP-friendly middle America. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, hoping to become the first female speaker, stumped for Democratic challengers in the left-leaning Northeast.

"Here's the way I see it," the president told a crowd inside an auditorium in Grand Island, Neb. "If the Democrats are so good about being the party of the opposition, let's just keep them in the opposition." Republicans are hoping their party's acclaimed get-out-the-vote operation can prevent a Democratic rout in a campaign marked by voter fury over the Iraq war.

Pelosi, D-Calif., was cautiously optimistic about her party's chances in Tuesday's midterm election. "We are thankful for where we are today, to be poised for success," she said in Colchester, Conn. "But we have two Mount Everests we have to climb — they are called Monday and Tuesday."

Her party appears increasingly confident it can ride a wave of public disenchantment with the Bush administration and Congress to victory in the House and, possibly, the Senate.

Two days before the election, both parties focused on turning out voters. The number of ballots cast historically is low in nonpresidential year elections, with only about 40 percent of U.S. citizens of voting age population going to the polls.

Republicans and Democrats have sent thousands of volunteers to states with the most contested races to work phone banks and canvass neighborhoods. Both parties also have assembled legal teams for possible challengers in case of voting problems.

Candidates made their final pitches in the campaign's final weekend. Republicans repeated their assertion that Democrats would raise taxes and prematurely pull out of Iraq if they controlled Congress. Democrats pressed their case for change, arguing that Republicans on Capitol Hill blindly have followed Bush's "failed policy."

"I will not vote to raise taxes for working men and women," vowed Democrat Jim Webb before 200 cheering supporters in mountainous Grundy, Va. He's trying to oust first-term GOP Sen. George Allen in one of the three most hotly contested Senate contests.

Allen courted Virginia voters in Landover, Md., outside FedEx Field, the home of the Washington Redskins. The senator's late father, George H. Allen, once coached the team. "There's no more perfect place to illustrate the need for a two-minute drill than a Redskins-Cowboys game," Allen said, comparing his campaign's final hours to a football game's closing seconds.