By Larry Wheeler
Gannett News Service

ELECTION 2004

Convention coverage • First lady, Calif. gov home in on leadership • Portman takes advantage of convention speech • Dem Zell Miller enrages his party • Notes from New York • Convention blog watch • Convention photo gallery More election news • Election special section

NEW YORK - If Democrats could, they would immediately switch Zell Miller's party affiliation to Republican and change his name to Benedict Arnold.

That's how much bad blood there is over the Georgia senator, who is a keynote speaker today at the Republican National Convention.

"The fact he's an elected Democrat isn't fooling anyone," said Matt Bennett, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee.

Democrats are so ticked off at Miller, a 72-year-old former Georgia governor, they juiced up a couple of anti-Zell Web sites and bought Zell-knocking commercials on Georgia and Manhattan cable TV. And Miller's not even running for re-election.

But when Miller takes the stage at Madison Square Garden, he will deliver a message Democrats seem to fear.

"I'm still a Democrat, and I support the president," Miller said in a preview of his speech sent out this week as part of a Bush-Cheney fund-raising appeal.

That's a pretty effective message, a top Republican strategist said.

"What Zell Miller reflects is how this president's leadership and how our party has been a magnet to bring discerning Democrats and independents over and to expand the party," Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager, told Gannett reporters.

For Democrats, the fury isn't so much that another of their conservative colleagues has jumped ship in spirit, if not in party registration. It's what Miller said 12 years ago about the president's father, George H.W. Bush, at the Democrats' convention.

"George Bush just doesn't get it," Miller said repeatedly in a speech that tore into then-President Bush as Democratic delegates prepared to nominate Bill Clinton.

Now, it's Miller who doesn't get it, said his former Democratic allies.

"The Democratic Party has pretty much taken him to where he is today," said Doug Gooch, a Democratic county chairman in north Georgia, the hill country that is Miller's home base. "Now, he is in the twilight of his career and he just abandoned the party."

Zellout.com, the online effort urging Miller to drop his Democratic Party affiliation, announced Tuesday their signature total passed 4,000 in six days.

Miller said it was the party that abandoned him.

"Some of my Democratic ties have become unraveled, but that's all right," he told Republican delegates from Ohio on Tuesday. "In my heart, I know I'm doing the right thing."

Enquirer Washington Bureau reporter Carl Weiser contributed.