Keen on annoying the opposition

“So far, I’ve been called a Nazi and asked if I’d like to be put in a draft and sent off to war,” said Gemma Edwardo, 19, a University of Pittsburgh student. Edwardo held a Bush-Cheney ’04 sign as she strolled past a mile-long line of Democrats that spilled off a quad at Carnegie Mellon University and coursed down a public street.

Sen. John F. Kerry would arrive within the hour, accompanied by his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, and rocker Jon Bon Jovi and actor Ted Danson. Many thousands were there to show their support for the Democratic presidential nominee. Edwardo and about 50 like-minded Republicans were there to annoy Democrats.

Their plan worked like a charm.

“See that bottle over there?” asked outraged Republican Joshua Katzeff, 21, pointing to a small empty plastic water bottle. “Someone threw it at us!” Moments later a middle-aged man in line would accost a reporter.

“Why are you talking to them?” the Democrat asked angrily. “There are thousands of us here and only a few of them!”

So it goes in the shadows of presidential campaign appearances, where throngs of passionate believers skirmish with vastly outnumbered yet equally passionate groups of detractors. In the increasingly rancorous battleground states where the election outcome will be determined, the stakes are high and so are the emotions. Both sides test -- sometimes at very high decibels, and occasionally in costume -- what tolerance for freedom of speech really means.

Though local police keep a fairly tight lid on protesters from both sides, the president draws a larger, more vocal opposition. Bush protesters are overwhelmingly motivated by the war in Iraq. (Typical signs: “You can’t liberate dead people” and “Bush lied. People died.”)

On a recent drizzly day in Wausau, Wis., 10,000 Republicans on their way to a Bush “victory rally” streamed past Mike Wallschlaeger, 41, a former Marine and current member of the Wisconsin National Guard. He held up a white bedsheet on which he had painted the famous image of the hooded Abu Ghraib prisoner with wires attached to his fingers. The only words on the sheet were “Bush War.” Wallschlaeger, who has also organized rallies in support of U.S. troops, had arrived early to stake out his turf.

“The church people, the anarchist group and the Democrats are all coming,” he explained. “They’re meeting at the bowling alley up the hill.”

As he stood silently with his sign, a few Republicans used their middle fingers to express disapproval. Most passed without comment, though some couldn’t resist.

“You gonna go home and smoke some pot?” taunted a dad who walked by toting his little girl on his shoulders. Standing next to Wallschlaeger, two young men who said they were college students responded in kind. “Oh, that’s very mature,” one yelled. “What a jerk,” said the other.

Don Eggert, 38, who wore an olive flight suit and a Bush mask to evoke the president’s “Mission Accomplished” photo op, had driven from Madison, Wis., a Democratic stronghold that Bush will not visit, to register his protest against the president.

A Dane County supervisor, Eggert is also a veteran of the Army and the Army Reserve and, like Wallschlaeger, is now in the National Guard. “I fully expect I will be called up,” he said. He made the two-hour drive to Wausau for three reasons, he said later. “One is to make sure you in the press see our dissatisfaction and analyze the president’s decisions more critically. Another is to remind those who agree with us privately that they’re not alone ... and the third is that maybe, if we’re lucky, some of the undecided folks who have doubts will see our discontent, and it will help tip the scales in our favor.”

About 150 protesters gathered behind barriers near the grandstand in Wausau where the president spoke. Their chants -- “W stands for wrong” and “Four more weeks” -- could be heard, like a low hum, during the lulls in Bush’s speech. A screaming match started after Bush left, as Republicans came face to face with the protesters when they walked back to their cars. Separated by a loose cordon of police, under towering evergreens, Bush fans yelled, “Four more years,” “Hope is here” and “No more flip-flops.”

The protesters fired back with “W stands for wrong” and, eventually, “Go home, rich kids.”

Anti-Kerry forces turn out to show their support for Bush, to tweak Kerry for his stance on Iraq (typical costume: Flipper the dolphin, or a giant flip-flop) or because they oppose abortion.

Last week, on the day Kerry came to Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Frank and Katrina Sorick, who own a family day care business, brought their three kids downtown. The Soricks, who have volunteered in Bush’s reelection campaign, were darned if they were going to let the Democrat come to town without a protest. Bush-Cheney staffers at campaign headquarters didn’t have time to organize a Kerry protest because they were busy organizing their “bracket event,” an appearance later that day by Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Rick Santorum that would help offset the press Kerry would receive in local news outlets.

Bundled up against the pre-winter chill, the family marched from Bush-Cheney headquarters across the street to the theater where Kerry would speak. Frank, a burly man in a blue jacket, carried a big Bush-Cheney sign, and Katrina tromped along beside him holding a boombox that blared what has become an anti-Kerry anthem -- the cheerful theme song of a popular 1960s TV show: “They call him Flipper, Flipper, faster than lightning. No one you see, is smarter than he.”

Nearby, a small group of anti-abortion protesters got into a spirited debate with police. The officers, some on horseback, were trying to keep the people carrying signs with photos of dead fetuses a couple of blocks away from the theater where Kerry would appear. The protesters felt strongly that their right to free speech was being infringed upon.

“It’s a high-tension thing,” Wilkes-Barre Police Chief Gerard Dessoye explained, as protester Cheryl Sullenger videotaped him. “It’s post 9/11. If I say you can’t be here, you can’t be here and you’ll be arrested if you don’t move.”

“Sir,” Sullenger said, “there are constitutional issues.”

“You still have your constitutional rights,” Dessoye said. “But I have safety issues. You can’t have people yelling and screaming on the sidewalk. There are businesses open here.”

Chris Slattery, who had come from Yonkers, N.Y., as part of what he called a Prayer for Life Tour, was incredulous.

“You can’t raise your voices here?”

“You can,” Dessoye replied, “but as soon as it becomes annoying, I can eject you.”

Eventually, the anti-Kerry folks were herded off the public square, around a corner, where they couldn’t even be heard by Democrats, let alone seen. (This was basically the same treatment given to pro-Kerry forces two weeks earlier when Bush was in town.)

Michael Quinn, 43, a solo anti-abortion protester who held a poster with a baby’s face and the word “Life,” watched the argument.

“People ask me why I do this,” he said. “When I die and get to heaven, I want all the aborted babies to know I voted pro-life. God is pro-life.”

It may be impossible to know for certain which side the almighty prefers, but both sides want voters to know that the most reviled man in the world is for the other guy.

In Pittsburgh, 18-year-old Republican Chris Kurowski toted a blown-up photo of Osama bin Laden with the slogan: “I want YOU to vote John Kerry.”

A Democrat in Wausau begged to differ. “Bin Laden,” his sign read, “wants four more years.”