AUBURN – Zell Miller may have been the only person with a Southern accent at a George W. Bush rally at Lost Valley on Tuesday, but he wasn’t the only Democrat.

Miller, a U.S. senator from Georgia, was joined by Massachusetts state Rep. Brian Golden, D-Boston, at the final stop of the GOP Maine Victory Tour 2004.

The campaign bus had swung through 16 Maine communities, mostly in the state’s 2nd Congressional District, before rolling into Auburn with a brief stop on the Twin Cities’ Longley Bridge.

Miller joined the tour’s finale. Flying late into Auburn Municipal Airport, he kept more than 200 Bush supporters packed into Lost Valley Ski Lodge waiting about 1 hours before taking the stage, flanked by local legislative candidates.

Miller, who gave the keynote address at the Republican National Convention in New York, said it was easy for him to oppose his party’s presidential nominee, who is from Massachusetts. After all, Miller said, he is from Georgia, where he predicted Bush would win with nearly 60 percent of the vote.

Golden, by comparison, “is courageous,” Miller said. “It takes real guts for Brian Golden to be for George W. Bush.”

Referring to reviews of his convention speech, which referred to him as “mad” and “angry,” the conservative Democrat said: “How perceptive of them. I don’t like it when the party I’ve worked in for 50 years is hijacked by the extreme liberals.”

Miller condemned congressional Democrats for failing to support Bush on war spending and criticized Senate colleague John Kerry for voting for the war resolution but against funding for the troops most recently.

“There’s one man I trust who’s not going to waver or wobble or grow weak in the knees, and that man is George W. Bush,” Miller said.

The economy is on the upswing, Miller said, crediting Bush with creating nearly 2 million jobs. “Of course, we need more jobs. And more jobs are coming,” Miller said. “This did not happen by accident. It took leadership.”

It took tax cuts to spur the economy, he said, which Bush has backed and passed three times since he was elected president. Domestic spending for important programs, such as those for education and veterans, was increased under Bush, Miller said.

He defended Bush’s decision to wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying, “We are fighting terrorism over there so we won’t have to fight them over here.”