COLUMBUS, Ohio, Oct 21 (AFP) - John Kerry literally went hunting for the support of gun-lovers Thursday and then tapped the power of "Superman" to trade shots with President George W. Bush on health, as the two scouted votes that could swing a race still too close to call.
Twelve days before the November 2 ballot, the bitter contest gave every sign of lurching to the same wild finish as in 2000. Bush clung to the barest of leads in the national vote while Kerry ran strong in several key state contests.
With every vote likely to count in the critical midwestern battleground of Ohio that Bush won in 2000, the often staid Kerry donned a camouflage jacket and picked up a shotgun to hunt geese in a carefully staged photo-op.
The Massachusetts senator emerged from a cornfield, the shotgun breached and cradled in the crook of his elbow, while his companions held four dead birds. Asked why he wasn't carrying one himself, he quipped, "Too lazy."
The event testified to the weight of the powerful National Rifle Association, which has endorsed Bush and pledged to spend up to 20 million dollars to mobilize its four million members against the pro-gun control Kerry.
Bush mocked Kerry's hunting trip while stumping in Hershey, Pennsylvania.
"He can run -- he can even run in camo -- but he cannot hide," said Bush, as the crowd laughed and cheered.
The line, without the reference to camouflage clothes, is one of Bush's favorite slogans in attacking Kerry.
The Democrat later switched his hunting gear for a business suit and attended a rally with Dana Reeve, widow of paralyzed Superman star Christopher Reeve, to promote stem-cell research as a possible cure for his spinal-cord injury.
Kerry lambasted Bush's opposition to stem-cell studies and criticized the president's overall approach to science. "He has an extreme political ideology that slows instead of advances science," the senator said.
"You get the feeling that if George Bush had been president during other periods in American history, he would have sided with the candle lobby against electricity, the buggy-makers against cars and typewriter companies against computers."
Bush made his 40th trip to the eastern state of Pennsyvlania, which he hoped to snatch out of the Democratic column, and took on Kerry over one of the challenger's supposed strengths, health care.
He told a rally in the town of Downingtown that Kerry "would move America down the road to federal control of health care which would lead to lower quality and health care rationing."
"When it comes to health care, Senator Kerry's prescription is bigger government with higher cost," Bush said. "My reforms will lower costs and give more control and choices to the American people."
Kerry, who has a hefty lead in polls over Bush on health care, is proposing a plan that would give all Americans access to the government system. The president puts an emphasis on limiting malpractice lawsuits to cut medical costs.
Bush was also scheduled to meet with the archbishop of Philadelphia in an attempt to woo Catholics, who represent about one fourth of the electorate and are present in key swing states.
Catholics voted narrowly Democratic four years ago. But the president, a born-again Methodist, took the majority of white Catholic votes in 2000 and leads among them this year.
Kerry, the first Catholic candidate for president since John F. Kennedy in 1960, has struggled to boost his share of the denomination's vote.
Several analysts suggested the race was heading towards the same nail-biting climax as in 2000, when the southeastern state of Florida handed the presidency to Bush by 537 votes after a recount dispute decided by the US Supreme Court.
Most national "tracking" polls showed Bush maintaining a statistically insignificant one-point lead over Kerry. But the challenger was holding his own in states such as Ohio and Florida, which went Republican four years ago.
Andrew Kohut, head of the Pew Research Institute, wrote Thursday in The New York Times that polls might remain unreliable until the final days of the race because voter opinion was "highly unstable."
"While many Americans are strongly committed to reelecting President Bush or getting rid of him, there remains a relatively large bloc of swing voters who are critical of the president but who still cannot comfortably back Senator Kerry," Kohut wrote.

10/22/2004 01:27 GMT - AFP