LAS VEGAS, United States (AFP) - Each claiming momentum from their final debate, US President George W. Bush and Democratic rival John Kerry set their sights on key battleground states just 19 days before the election.
"Now it's a sprint to the finish," Bush told reporters in a rare appearance aboard his Air Force One presidential plane, clinging to maverick Republican Senator John McCain. "My spirits are high, I'm enthusiastic about my chances."
Kerry all but erased Bush's lead over the course of their three, 90-minute exchanges. With national polls showing them deadlocked, the race shifted to a handful of up-for-grabs states that will decide the November 2 election.
In Nevada, the Democratic senator gave a speech to a powerful and politically active senior citizens' lobby, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), which claims some 36 million members nationwide.
"We need a fresh start in this country of ours," Kerry said. "I believe we need a president who will fight for the great middle class and those struggling to join it."
The Democrat opened a 10-day blitz of seven up-for-grabs states -- Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Florida and Minnesota -- that may decide who gets the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the White House.
Bush ducked the AARP gathering but held a campaign rally here with Republican governors who helped him carry the disputed 2000 election, and spoke to another group of supporters in Reno, Nevada, before campaigning in the northwestern state of Oregon.
He was to campaign Friday in Iowa and Wisconsin, and spend Saturday scouring Florida for votes before returning to Washington. He was to try to erode Kerry's lead in New Jersey on Monday, then return to Florida.
Despite a series of polls showing more viewers believed Kerry had won Wednesday's debate, Bush also claimed victory in the televised slug-fest on Iraq, health care, the economy, abortion and other issues.
The president accused Kerry of being weak on terrorism and uncertain on Iraq; favoring higher taxes and government-run health care; and sitting on "the far-left bank" of US politics.
Kerry countered that Bush had let Osama bin Laden slip away because of his focus on Iraq; abandoned the US middle class in favor of cutting taxes for the richest Americans; and short-changed efforts to secure US borders.
Kerry criticised a remark by Bush in Wednesday'd final presidential debate in which the president denied he had once said he was not concerned about bin Laden.
"He couldn't explain to America, why when we had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora, he outsourced that job to Afghan warlords and sent them up and Osama bin Laden got away," Kerry said at an evening rally in the midwestern state of Iowa.
"Then, he denied, he denied having said when asked about Osama bin Laden months later, he said, 'oh I don't know, I really haven't thought about it that much, I'm not that concerned.'"
"My friends, we need a president of the United States who knows how to fight an effective war on terror."
Kerry highlighted Bush's comments on the issue in the debate prompting Bush to reply : "gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations," said Bush.
The Democrat's camp pointed to a series of snap polls showing he won the third debate, saying Kerry had carried all three televised face-to-face confrontations and now had the edge going into the final straightaway.
The challenger seized on the Bush administration's announcement of emergency measures to skirt a 7.38-trillion-dollar debt limit, as well as a record budget deficit for 2004 and plans to use pension money to keep the government running.
"George Bush continues to make history for all the wrong reasons: He's the first president to go without creating a new job since the Great Depression and now he's run up more debt in shorter period of time than all the presidents combined in the 200 years from Washington through Reagan," said Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer.
But Kerry found himself on the defensive as Republicans accused him of "attacking" the vice president's openly gay daughter by saying she is a lesbian.
Kerry mentioned Mary Cheney when asked during the debate whether homosexuality was a choice, part of the broader divisive debate about gay marriage.
"We're all God's children, and I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as," Kerry replied.
The vice president, his wife Lynne Cheney, and Bush campaign aides assailed Kerry for the reference.
"John Kerry, John Edwards and (Kerry spokeswoman) Mary Beth Cahill have made perfectly clear that they have made attacking Mary Cheney their policy," Bush campaign spokeswoman Nicolle Devenish told reporters at a campaign rally here.
Kerry's comments were "crass, below the belt," she said.
Candidates' families are generally considered off-limits.
But Kerry aides noted that the vice president himself had mentioned his adult daughter's homosexuality while on the campaign trail, and said the Republicans were using manufactured outrage to avoid discussing Bush's record.