By Carl Weiser
Enquirer Washington Bureau

CONVENTION COVERAGE

• Bush: 'Pursue your dreams' • Ohio, brace for politicians • Swing voters like speech • Pataki praises 'guts' • Efforts to bring in women • Notes from New York • President Bush's remarks • Video of speech • Convention blog watch • Convention photo gallery • Election special section

NEW YORK - The 23 trips to the state so far this year by the presidential contenders? Those thousands of television ads? The people knocking on your door and calling you about the candidates?

That was just the preseason. The real campaign season starts now.

Are you ready for some politics?

"We go into overdrive now," said Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett. "When we get back, it's going to be 18- to 20-hour days."

"You cannot miss even a single vote," said Pakkiri Rajagopal, 53, a delegate from Monfort Heights.

With the Republican National Convention over, Ohio will see a campaign that's already intense become even more so:

•  President Bush's post-convention road trip takes him to Cleveland and Ashtabula Saturday. Even though that will be his third trip to Ohio in a week, he plans to return next week for a Southeast Ohio swing that's likely to include Chillicothe and Portsmouth, local officials say.

• Democratic nominee John Kerry was scheduled to hold a midnight rally in Springfield and then bus through Newark, Akron and Steubenville today and Saturday. He'll return Monday for a Labor Day rally in Cleveland.

• The Kerry campaign will also start airing a new Ohio ad today. "While President Bush thinks the economy is just fine, the ad stresses that America and Ohio can do better than 230,000 Ohio jobs lost and spotlights the Kerry-Edwards plan to create and keep good-paying jobs here in America," the Kerry campaign said in a statement.

• Vice-presidential candidate John Edwards will visit Chillicothe Tuesday. "It shows that John Kerry and John Edwards care about Southeast Ohio," said Chillicothe Mayor Joe Sulzer.

• California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said he wouldn't campaign for Bush outside of California - except in Ohio. He holds the Arnold Classic, a bodybuilding and fitness convention, in Columbus every year. "You could see me there. It's kind of like a second home to me," Schwarzenegger said.

"It's going to be decided in the last minute of the last hour of the last day," Bush strategist Karl Rove told Ohio reporters Thursday.

He joked that Bush was running for president by running for governor of Ohio. And he mentioned Warren County - twice - as the kind of place where "we really need to pump up the registration and vote production."

Rajagopal is planning a "Families for Bush" picnic later this month for a park on the West Side. He'll probably make it pot luck, though he might hire a band, he said.

Highland County Republican Chairwoman Kathleen Ayres will spend next week at the county fair in Hillsboro.

"We're going to be registering as many people as we can. Converting the unconverted," she said. Highland County is also one of the few places Bush hasn't visited in the state - something she aims to change.

"Any time you can get the president to come to your town, it's a great moment in history," said Curt Braden of North Canton, chairman of the Stark County Republicans. "What you see on TV and what you hear on the radio is only half of what you experience in person. He looks you right in the eye and he talks to you."

Rove himself will hold a conference call next week with Ohio county party chairs and Republican politicians to plan the next two months.

Ohio already is well ahead of most states in organization. It has 12,132 precinct chairs. Back in March, the party began hiring its 15 regional "72-hour coordinators" - the people who'll be getting people to the polls on Election Day. They've been opening phone banks and recruiting volunteers - "building infrastructure," said Chris McNulty, the state GOP's executive director.

Most of the Kentucky delegates aren't sure who their Bush county chairpeople are - or even if they've been named.

Kentucky is not a battleground state like Ohio. Bush is expected to win as easily as he did in 2000, when he beat Al Gore 57 percent to 41 percent.

"I've had gobs and gobs of calls," said delegate Barbara Haas of Fort Thomas. "Everyone wants bumper stickers and yard signs."

Nick D'Andrea, 21, of Richwood will organize fellow College Republicans at the University of Louisville for a "campus canvass," in which they knock on dorm doors.

"It's like having your own precinct captains, except in dorms," he said

Because their states are not as contested, Republicans from Kentucky and Indiana might flood Ohio.

"The most important thing is our national security," said Kenton County Commissioner Adam Koenig, who will head Young Professionals for Bush in Northern Kentucky.

Email cweiser@gannett.com