LOCAL : Quayle Thanks El Toro Marines’ Kin During Campaign Sweep

Vice President Dan Quayle, arriving today at El Toro Marine Corps Air Station for a day of campaigning in Orange County, thanked the families of soldiers deployed to Saudi Arabia and delivered a message from President Bush.

“Thank you for helping us keep peace in the Middle East,” he told a crowd of about 3,000, including students of MacArthur Intermediate School in Santa Ana, many of them children of the deployed Marines.

“Our message is a simple one. We want peace but (Iraqi) aggression shall not stand. It is now up to Saddam Hussein to choose the path of peace.”

Quayle arrived at the Marine base from Ontario aboard Air Force 2 about 11:50 this morning, and he was immediately briefed for 10 minutes by two generals about the Middle East deployment.

This afternoon, Quayle was scheduled to attend the opening of the Asian-American Republican Headquarters in Westminster, where leaders of the Vietnamese and Korean communities will launch voter registration efforts for the Nov. 6 election.

Quayle was met at El Toro by California’s Republican gubernatorial candidate, Pete Wilson, who helped open the same headquarters during his successful 1988 U.S. Senate campaign.

The visit is part of the Republican Party’s aggressive effort to win the political hearts of the county’s rapidly growing Southeast Asian community.

Quayle was also scheduled to attend a party fund-raising luncheon in Newport Beach, and another fund-raiser this evening in Los Angeles for state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor.