At the Democratic convention, the Republicans' war room was decorated on Monday with the so-called liberal ratings of Democrats' voting records.
BOSTON, July 26 - In case anyone missed the fact that Senator John Kerry was booed at Fenway Park on Sunday night or that Teresa Heinz Kerry told a newspaper reporter to "shove it," a few dozen Republicans made sure these tidbits were not lost in the Democrats' overflow of scripted e-mail messages and the happy television chitchat bubbling up from their convention.
The Bush campaign and the Republican National Committee have temporarily transplanted their "war room" from suburban Virginia to a small bunker just two blocks from the Fleet Center, where the Democrats are expected to nominate Mr. Kerry for president on Thursday night.
John Feehery, who in Washington is a spokesman for the Republican speaker of the House, J. Dennis Hastert, is among those encamped at the bunker here. He managed to obtain a credential that allowed him into the Fleet Center on Monday afternoon and to circulate among news organizations, handing out his memorandum mentioning Mr. Kerry's reception at Fenway and his wife's remark. (Credentials won by the other side are by now a standard feature of war-room tactics; most emanate from lobbyists in Washington who like to play both sides.)
Mr. Feehery is only one soldier in the Republican field operation. Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is overseeing about three dozen people, including a rotation of "spinners" like Ralph Reed and Mary Matalin, and top Republican strategists. There is a regional desk focused on battleground states and a nerve center with computers monitoring and cataloging all things Kerry. The effort here is coordinated with scores of surrogate speakers in the battleground states so all are talking from the same page.
"The goal is to get into the stories," Mr. Gillespie said in an interview in his bare-bones bunker office. "We know we're swimming upstream and that our quotes are going to be on the jump page. But we don't want to let charges go unanswered and we don't want to allow them to ditch the senator's record, because we believe it's important in the debate."
It is the Republican view that Mr. Kerry's voting record in the Senate shows him to be a liberal, partial to tax raises and weak on defense and that the convention is trying to conceal that information, hence the new Republican Web site DemsExtremeMakeover.com.
But what makes the blood flow among Republican workers is something unexpected, like Mrs. Heinz Kerry's remark. "It was the most dramatic dichotomy between the Kerry campaign's assertions that they want to be positive and the reality," one worker said.
The planting of the party flag in enemy territory began on a limited basis in 1984 at the Democratic convention in San Francisco, said Rich Galen, a Republican strategist who is working out of the bunker here. The practice became more common in 1992 when the Clinton campaign called it the war room and aggressively countered the first President George Bush.
The evolving technology has changed the nature of these movable war rooms, which are driven by the Internet, satellite feeds, surrogate speakers and talk radio, but also, as Mr. Feehery demonstrated, by old-fashioned shoe leather.
"What's changed the dynamic is 24/7 cable news coverage," Mr. Gillespie said. "The satellite feeds into battleground states is a little bit new."
Mr. Gillespie plans to brief reporters every morning with the Republican spin to counter the Democratic spin. He is also importing different Republican officials all week to amplify the party line. On Monday, Gov. Bill Owens of Colorado, Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey of Massachusetts and Representative Henry Bonilla of Texas stood at his side for the briefing. Then they fanned out for interviews.
Mr. Owens sat in the bunker's television studio and conducted interviews via satellite with 10 television stations across the country and 6 radio stations. Six of the television interviewers were in Denver, where the governor lives and works, but the Boston setting gave his interviews a dash of pizazz. It also spoke to the mounting concern among Republicans that Colorado could swing Democratic this year.
Just what bang the Republicans got for the buck was not clear. Mr. Owens spent much of his interview time assuring his listeners, at least those in Colorado, that he would be back in the state on Monday night, and got in only an occasional mild poke at Mr. Kerry.
"Colorado is a battleground state," he said between interviews, explaining his style. "I'm really not hard-edged when it comes to politics."
As the Democrats build toward Mr. Kerry's likely nomination on Thursday night, the Republicans plan to import other marquee names, including Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, and William Weld, the former governor of Massachusetts, who lost to Mr. Kerry in the last Senate election.
Mr. Gillespie said it was essential to provide the Republican point of view. But he acknowledged there was a point when reporters might cease to toggle between the campaigns for comment.
"You could go on exponentially," he said with a laugh. "It's like endless mirrors back to back."
NY Times
