At the same time, he stepped up his attacks on President Bush - mostly on domestic subjects like jobs, trade, education and health care. "When it comes to reality, George Bush has a simple strategy: Ignore it, deny it, then try to hide it," Kerry said in a new-to-Ohio sound bite.

In a seven-county bus tour on a busy autumn weekend in the hills of southern Ohio, Kerry packed his campaign schedule. Before rallying 8,000 on a family farm south of Waverly, Kerry met with voters in the Xenia High School gymnasium, shopped for pumpkins in Fayette County, went to Mass at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Chillicothe, and bought a $140 out-of-state hunting license in Pike County.

He'll use that hunting license later this week in the Mahoning Valley, where he'll return to Ohio to shoot ducks and geese.

In all, Kerry and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards, plan three more trips to Ohio this week alone - including an Edwards stop in Cincinnati. Details have not been released.

On the other side, Vice President Dick Cheney will visit Price Hill Tuesday as part of a bus tour through Ohio, but Bush has no announced plans to visit the state this week.

The purpose of Saturday's trip, said senior adviser Mike McCurry, wasn't so much to fire up Kerry's base as it was to cool down President Bush's. (Bush won Greene County with 58.2 percent, Fayette by 61.2 percent, Ross with 52.6 percent and Pike with 50.5 percent.)

In a loose, freewheeling interview with Ohio newspaper reporters aboard his campaign bus, Kerry was cognizant of the political terrain - socially conservative and fiscally moderate - rolling by outside.

"I'm not a liberal. I'm a moderate, thoughtful, practical person who looks for solutions," he said, lighting up at a question about the Bush campaign's ramped-up efforts to cast him as a tax-and-spend "Massachusetts liberal."

Kerry recited his support for balanced budgets, President Reagan's 1986 tax cuts, welfare reform, faith-based programs and law enforcement. "If you run through my record, I've been an entrepreneurial, pro-business, job growth Democrat who doesn't like labels.

"I mean, if this is the region we're talking to, and I know it is, there's nothing conservative about piling debt on our children for years to come," he said. "There's an old saying, that if you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic, because we've made the economy stronger than these guys have every single time."

Kerry campaigned all day with former Ohio Sen. John Glenn, who got three standing ovations in Xenia alone. The astronaut-senator, Kerry said, told him there are only two things visible from space with the naked eye: "The Himalayan Mountains, and the Bush deficit."

Along the way, Kerry professed his love for the Buckeye State with rapid-fire one-liners, joking that John Edwards' plane malfunction on a Cleveland runway Friday was just an excuse to spend more time in Ohio. "I don't want to say I've been here a lot, but I'm having my mail forwarded here," he said.

At a pep rally-like "town-hall" meeting with 2,700 supporters in the Xenia High School gymnasium, Kerry brought a prop: the Oct. 12 edition of the Findlay Courier, in which Bush's treasury secretary is quoted as telling Hancock County Republicans that job losses are a "myth."

Turning to Xenia's Michael F. Adams, a 28-year-old former autoworker who was laid off last week when his job was sent overseas, Kerry said, "Is your job loss a myth, Mike? ... What is this administration trying to sell you?

"The people who have lost jobs in the United States are not myths. They are our neighbors," Kerry said in what advisers called the first of several "closing argument speeches" Kerry will try out in the last 16 days of the campaign.

In a speech that focused mostly on domestic policy, Kerry also blasted the Bush administration's handling of the flu vaccine shortage, calling it "a perfect example of what's wrong with this president."

Kerry even seemed to take a tougher stance on lawsuit reform - especially in the area of medical malpractice. It's an issue that's been a key part of Bush's campaign.

Previously, Kerry has deflected questions about tort reform by referring people to a vague statement on his Web site.

"Remember how only Nixon could go to China?" he said. "Only John Edwards and John Kerry can get tort reform done in America, in a way that's fair. It's in my plan. It's nothing new. The Bush people are distorting this."

If Ohio has a Bible Belt, Xenia, Chillicothe and Waverly are its notches. Across the street from Xenia High School was an oversized sign reading, "Vote the Bible" above 11 Bush-Cheney signs.

Even the liberals in this part of the state seem to be religious.

"I'm a Protestant, and my pastor says I can't be a Democrat and a Christian," complained Paul Bruns, a 57-year-old used car salesman from Franklin, in Warren County. He wore a shirt with Kerry-Edwards buttons on the front, bumper stickers pasted to his back and a "What Would Jesus Do?" wristband.

He said his issues go beyond abortion: he's afraid of losing his business if the economy doesn't pick up, and his daughter has multiple sclerosis and would benefit from wider stem-cell research that conservatives oppose on ethical and religious grounds.

E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com