by Giles Hewitt
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida, July 26 (AFP) - With US Democrats opening their national convention in Boston on Monday, their presidential candidate made a pointed visit to Florida, scene of the 2000 electoral fiasco that still haunts the party faithful.
Speaking at a town hall-style meeting at Cape Canaveral, Senator John Kerry said the same spirit of discovery and imagination that sent man into space should be brought to bear on earthbound issues like affordable health care and equal education.
"I'm here today, on the first day of the Democratic convention, because there's no better place to launch something than right here in Cape Canaveral," said Kerry, who was accompanied by space hero and former senator John Glenn.
"It's a metaphor, not just for going into space, but for everything we can do here on earth. We need to push the curve of discovery," he said, citing the importance of research into incurable diseases like AIDS, Parkinson's and Alzheimers.
Kerry's arrival at the John F. Kennedy Space Center was slightly delayed after he insisted on turning his motorcade around to check on a police motorbike outrider who had taken a spill and injured himself.
The senator is currently in the middle of a six-day tour, criss-crossing the country ahead of his star turn on the last day of the Boston convention on Thursday, when he will formally accept the Democratic presidential nomination.
All stops on the trip are in states that are expected to witness close battles on election day, November 2.
Florida, however, carries extra significance, given the view of the state -- still held by many Democrats -- as the place where George W. Bush 'stole' the 2000 election from Al Gore.
The voting in Florida was plunged into chaos amid charges that many blacks were wrongly removed from the electoral roll, and that many votes were improperly counted because of the punch-card ballot system that produced the now infamous "chads."
Controversy raged over the result for more than a month, before the US Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, stopped any further recounts and awarded Florida -- along with the state's 25 electoral votes -- to Bush on the basis of a 537-vote advantage.
The ruling tipped the overall election against then-vice president Gore, who, with 267 electoral votes, lost to Bush's 271, only one more than the minimum 270 needed to clinch the presidency.
"This time, no hanging chad is going to decide, no Supreme Court," Glenn said as he introduced Kerry on Monday.
Kerry has often referred to the 2000 debacle during his current campaign, pledging that in November "not only will every vote count, we're going to make sure that every vote is counted."
On Tuesday, Kerry will be at a naval base in Norfolk, Virginia, where he will push his credentials on national security -- a key campaign issue.
His final stop on the symbolic run-in to Boston will be Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence and US Constitution were written.
The tour is aimed at building up Kerry before his high-stakes convention address.
Locked in a dead heat with Bush in opinion polls, Kerry is hoping that a strong performance will help him pull away from the incumbent and define his candidacy for the significant number of swing voters who still have a fuzzy impression of the 60-year-old senator.
A Time Magazine survey released Sunday found that only 29 percent of voters said they knew a "great deal" about Kerry, while 67 percent said they knew "a great deal" about Bush.
Just before the event at Cape Canaveral, Kerry defended a remark by his wife, Teresa Heinz, who on Sunday had accused a reporter of putting words in her mouth and told him to "shove it" -- in an exchange captured on videotape.
"I think my wife speaks her mind appropriately," Kerry said.