POLAND — September is a special month for America, especially for former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, he told a roomful of Androscoggin County Republicans on Saturday.

Card, the featured speaker at a GOP fundraiser at the Poland Spring Inn, spoke to inspire his listeners and to encourage them to get out to vote next month.

Most of November’s decisions at the polls will be based on what happens this month, he said.

“You have 16 days left to help shape those decisions,” Card told the Republicans.

The bulk of his speech centered on September as key to American history, saying it was the birth-month of the Continental Congress in 1774, the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the Constitution in 1787, the Bill of Rights in 1789 — as well as the Emancipation Proclamation and the first vote cast by a woman.

Card served as the White House chief of staff for President George. W. Bush from the moment the president assumed office in January 2001 through April 2006.

Card said his most memorable day comes from a September during that time, in 2001. It wasn’t the attacks of Sept. 11 but several days later as President Bush and his advisers struggled to respond to those attacks and move the country forward.

After a morning of briefings with security staff, the FBI and his cabinet, Bush and Card flew to New York to visit ground zero. The day involved visits to the World Trade Center site, then visits to emergency workers and finally, to the families of those lost. Card recounted how the mother of a lost policeman pressed her son’s badge into the president’s hand.

“And she said, ‘Don’t ever forget him,'” Card said. “The President said, ‘America will forget; they will move on. That’s what we do. But you don’t have to worry about me. I won’t forget.'”

Later, on a flight to Camp David in Maryland, Card told an exhausted Bush he was a great president.

“The job description for the president calls for him to preserve, protect and defend the United States of America,” Card said. “It does not say he should do it if it’s easy or if everyone agrees — or even if Congress or the United Nation agree.”

It was the first time members of the Androscoggin GOP had scheduled a fundraising event so close to an election. It drew 140, raising $5,600 in ticket sales.

Also in attendance, U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, Republican candidate for governor Paul LePage and Jason Levesque, the Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.

Snowe urged everyone to work hard to elect LePage and to put Republicans in the State House.

“Imagine what Paul could do and what he could accomplish with a Republican majority,” Snowe said.

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