AUBURN – Ten days before the election, Elizabeth Edwards stood in the cold at the Wallingford apple house Saturday morning, offering a message for undecided voters.

“In every issue they’re facing, they have a choice. They can have someone in the White House fighting for them, or someone for interests that actually oppose them,” said Edwards, the wife of Democrat vice presidential candidate John Edwards.

“When you meet people at the gas station, you don’t need to convince them that (President Bush) hasn’t been working in their interest,” she said to cheers and applause. “We’re not going to get any relief from a president and vice president so tied to the oil industry.”

Making her second trip to Lewiston-Auburn in less than two weeks, she told an estimated 250 to 300 people that under President Bush’s watch, not only have Maine seniors been going to Canada for prescriptions, now they’re also looking at Canada for flu shots.

Edwards criticized the Bush-Cheney campaign for maintaining the country would be less safe under John Kerry. “It takes a certain amount of audacity for the president to say these things” when Bush is all about offense, “and nothing about defense,” she said.

Kerry would go after terrorists, she said, but also would do more to prevent another Sept. 11, changes recommended by the 9/11 Commission: Better security for borders, rail, subways, ships, ports, plane cargo, and at chemical and nuclear plants.

“There are 128 chemical plants in this country. If any one were attacked, it would kill 1 million people,” Edwards said. The president did not mandate security because that would cut into the industry’s profits, she said. That “is unconscionable. … This president is not doing any of these things. John Kerry would.”

Copy the Story Link