DOWNINGTOWN, Pa. - A camouflage-clad Sen. John Kerry went goose hunting Thursday while President Bush paid a call on the archbishop of a heavily Catholic battleground state, a clash of symbolism in a tight race for the White House.
Unimpressed with Kerry's shotgun-toting excursion, Vice President Dick Cheney accused Kerry of donning an "October disguise" to keep his record on gun issues hidden from the voters.
Twelve days before the election, an Associated Press survey among likely voters had the race as a statistical tie, 49 percent for the Massachusetts senator and 46 for the man in the White House. The three-point margin was inside the survey's margin of error.
The same AP-Ipsos Public Affairs survey produced a tie on the question of preferred congressional leadership, 47 percent favoring Democrats and 46 percent for Republicans. That pointed toward problems for House Democrats, struggling to gain the 12 seats they need to win back the majority they lost a decade ago.
In the presidential race, the AP survey had 51 percent supporting the president's conduct of foreign policy and the war on terror. But voters are split on which man would do the better job in the war on Iraq, and Kerry is viewed as better able to stimulate job growth. More than half of those surveyed, 56 percent, said the nation was headed in the wrong direction, a danger signal for any incumbent.
Other recent polls show a similarly close race, with Bush and Kerry battling over about a dozen states that remain competitive.
Kerry's hunting excursion in Boardman, Ohio, was a classic photo-op. So, too, Bush's stop at St. John's Church Rectory in Downington, Pa., where he met with Cardinal Justin Rigali, Catholic archbishop of Philadelphia.
Kerry strolled past television cameras on his return from a two-hour hunting trip, wearing a camouflage jacket and carrying a 12-gauge shotgun under his arm. A hunting companion carried the bird the senator said he had shot.
Reporters never got a glimpse of Bush's meeting with the spiritual leader of Catholics in a state where 23 percent of voters practice the faith. But photographers were briefly permitted inside the 20-minute meeting between the two men, good enough to record the image the president's re-election campaign wanted.
"They had a good discussion about shared priorities," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters after the meeting.
Bush said Kerry's plan to expand health care means "bigger government with higher costs."
