Eric Draper, White House President Bush welcomed the 2004 Scripps Howard Spelling Bee champion, David Tidmarsh, 14, of South Bend, Ind., to the Oval Office yesterday. Today the President heads to Pennsylvania. Click photo for larger image.

President Bush will cultivate his partisan roots today as he travels by bus through the conservative heartland of Pennsylvania.

The president will start his campaign day in Kutztown with a question-and-answer session before a picked audience at Kutztown University. Then, he'll head to Lancaster for a speech and end his day crossing the Susquehanna River for a major rally at the York Fairgrounds.

Bush has devoted so much attention to the state that the casual observer might think he were running for re-election as Pennsylvania's governor. Before today's visit, he had already appeared in the state 29 times since his election. Vice President Dick Cheney made the latest of his numerous visits Sunday, with stops in Pittsburgh and Altoona. He will return next week to campaign for GOP congressional candidate Scott Paterno.

Four years ago, Democratic former Vice President Al Gore won the state over Bush by more than 200,000 votes, a margin of nearly 5 percentage points. But the communities where the president will visit today figure to be solid Bush country. While losing statewide, Bush won these three counties -- Berks, Lancaster and York -- by a combined margin of more than 100,000 votes in 2000.

Recent surveys suggest another competitive race for the state's 21 electoral votes. A poll conducted last month by Quinnipiac University depicted Bush and his Democratic challenger, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, in a virtual tie. Kerry led the president, 44 percent to 43 percent, with another 7 percent for independent candidate Ralph Nader. Without Nader in the mix, however, nearly all of the independent candidate's supporters migrated to the Democrat, who led the president in a head-to-head test by the slightly more comfortable margin of 49 percent to 43 percent.

One recent national poll depicted Bush with a narrow lead over his challenger. The AP-Ipsos poll, released yesterday, found Bush slightly leading Kerry, 49 percent to 45 percent, with Nader at 3 percent. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. A month ago, the Bush-Kerry matchup was tied, and Nader had 6 percent.