Behind schedule after a delayed flight, Ken Mehlman last night rushed into a room at the ornate Duquesne Club, Downtown, to address a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

"First of all, let me say to my fellow Christians, it's good to be here," the Republican national chairman said, cheerfully fanning the partisan flame ignited by his opposite number's comment earlier in the week that Republicans were "pretty much a white, Christian party.''

Jibes at the remark by Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean were a staple of the hastily arranged gathering of about 50 GOP partisans. The event underscored the partisan spat, but coalition member Joe Weinroth, the GOP candidate for mayor of Pittsburgh, insisted that its timing was coincidental. "Despite those rantings, this was going to go on anyway,'' he said.

Mehlman's appearance was one of a series of outreach efforts that he and the RNC have pursued with groups outside the traditional Republican constituencies. The outrage they mustered at Dean's comment notwithstanding, Weinroth and others acknowledged that the preponderance of Jewish voters, with a tradition of allegiance to the Democratic Party, remained a challenge for Republicans.

Surveying the crowd of about 60, Weinroth joked, "We didn't know that there were that many Jewish Republicans."

But both he and Mehlman said that political affinity was ripe for change.

"We are at a very historic moment in terms of the party, but also our community," said Mehlman, who is Jewish himself.

An unapologetic Dean was on Capitol Hill in Washington yesterday, rebutting the criticisms of his remarks that have come from Republicans and even some members of his own party.

"You know, I think a lot of this is exactly what the Republican want, and that's a diversion,'' Dean told the Associated Press after a meeting with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Dismissing the week's controversy as "a media circus," Dean said, "What we're focused on is how to have a decent Social Security system, how to have a strong national defense, how to have jobs in America again and how to deal with incredibly high gasoline prices and get a decent energy bill that will actually do something about gas prices."

Mehlman, who appeared at the Duquesne Club on his way to addressing a fund-raising dinner of the Allegheny County Republican Party, used both occasions to denounce Democratic stands on all of those issues.

"They're a party that just says, 'no,' " he maintained, just before speaking to the county party crowd of about 500 at the William Penn Hotel, Downtown. "They're so consumed by their own anger that they aren't saying what they are for."

In addition to promoting the overall policies of the Bush administration, Mehlman urged the groups at both ends of Sixth Avenue to concentrate their efforts on the re-election of Pennsylvania's Sen. Rick Santorum. "We have no higher priority next year'' than the Santorum race, the national chairman said before speaking to the partisan crowd.

National Republican support for Santorum's re-election will be on display Tuesday, when President Bush is scheduled to travel to Philadelphia to appear at a fund-raising event for the two-term incumbent. Santorum is likely to face Democratic state Treasurer Bob Casey Jr. in what is expected to be one of the most hard-fought and high-profile Senate races in the nation next year. Casey is being challenged for the Democratic nomination by Chuck Pennacchio, a Philadelphia college professor.

In a statewide Keystone Poll conducted by Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, released Tuesday, Casey led Santorum by 44 percent to 37 percent, with 19 percent of respondents undecided.