By Carl Weiser
Enquirer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - In living rooms, restaurants and dorm rooms throughout Greater Cincinnati, fans of President Bush will gather Thursday night for dozens of Internet-organized parties for the president.

In this hotly contested state in a hotly contested election, the parties are one more sign of how the presidential campaigns are trying to reach more voters, in more ways, earlier than ever before.

The parties aren't fund-raisers. They're sales parties similar to Tupperware parties. What they're selling is the president. According to a pro-Bush Web site, some 5,000 similar events will be taking place across North America that night.

Party guests - neighbors, friends, strangers - will get Bush bumper stickers and T-shirts, sign up for volunteering, watch a videotape from the president and get a conference call from Vice President Dick Cheney. Hosts can buy a $19.95 party pack with hats, buttons, bumpers stickers and yard signs.

"It's about getting in touch with your neighbors, getting your neighbors involved. This is grass-roots politics at its basest," said Scott Lepsky, 34, a Fairfield electrical supply salesman who is hosting a party with two other friends.

"I hope to share facts showing his opponent's 'doublespeak' on almost every issue," said Tony Logan, 34, who will serve barbecue to 20 or 30 friends at his Bush house party in Fort Mitchell. "If Mr. Kerry can't make a decision now, how will he be able to as president, in one of the most critical times in American history?"

Kerry campaign spokesman Bill Burton dismissed the Bush house parties as a gimmick.

"It seems like George Bush has a gimmick for every single thing he's doing on this campaign, but not one bit of real leadership required to rebuild the economy and win the war on terror," Burton said.

The Bush campaign had set a goal of 2,004 parties nationwide. As of Tuesday, it had registered nearly 8,000 in all. Ohio had the most of any state, with 430, according to Kevin Madden, spokesman for the Bush campaign.

At the Western Hills home of lawyer Melissa Powers, eight mothers will gather in the living room for what Powers described as a political girls' night out.

At a country club development in West Chester, Debbie and George Lang, both 42, will play host to about 50 friends over chicken wings. George Lang's goal: to get Butler County to deliver big for Bush.

Eric Toy of Mason, a sophomore at Miami University, expects about 15 other students to join him for pizza in his dorm room.

"I feel it's important to flex our grass-roots muscle early in the campaign," Toy, 20, said. (The party won't be a kegger for Bush: "Since it's in the dorms, I don't really think having a keg is a good idea," he said.)

The Bush campaign is borrowing a page from Howard Dean's campaign, which organized fund-raising house parties for Dean via the Internet last year.

Campaigns have found that the Internet is a fabulous mechanism for organizing, said Carol Dorr, director of George Washington University's Institute for Politics Democracy & the Internet.

Earlier this month, an anti-Bush Web-based group called the MoveOn PAC organized thousands of bake sales for Kerry. Selling goodies like Condoleezza Rice Krispie Treats, they raised an estimated $750,000, according to MoveOn PAC.

Both the Bush and Kerry campaigns are using the Internet well, Dorr said. The Kerry campaign excels at using it to raise money while the Bush campaign is best at using it to organize people. Kerry's campaign is organizing house parties for May 22.

"For people who aren't hard-core political junkies, it's just an easier, smoother welcoming mat for a campaign," she said. Organizing house parties on the Web brings in people who don't want to do anything as formal as walking into a campaign office and volunteering.

"It makes it less intimidating," Dorr said.

Less intimidating for the guests, maybe, but not the hosts.

"I guess I'm going to have to decorate and everything!" said Linda Oda, 44, who thought her party at her Springboro farm would attract only family members but has ballooned to 60 people, including kids.

"We're giving the kids paints and markers to make homemade Bush for President signs that we hope their parents will use in their place of business," she said.

Some people have even invited neighbors to their parties who are Democrats.

"I'd love to convert a few," Lepsky said.

For many, this kind of activism is new. Powers said she has been a Republican but had never been this active.

"I thank God every day that we have George Bush as our president," she said. The media are trying to defeat Bush, she said, while the president is doing everything he can to make her family safer from terrorists.

"I think this election is probably the most important election of my lifetime. It's not about the next four years alone. It's about 30 years under the next Supreme Court," said Lori Viars, 43, who will play host to fellow moms and kids at the McDonald's in Lebanon.

The lunchtime party - so far up to 10 moms and 12 kids - will be in the play area.

"The kids play in the halls and tunnels," she said. "We moms can work our strategy."

For information on the house parties:

•President Bush.

•Sen. John Kerry.

E-mail cweiser@gannett.com