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No Letup in McCain, Bush Attacks

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TIMES STAFF WRITERS

The once-friendly, now-nasty campaign for the Republican presidential nomination exploded anew Thursday as Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Texas Gov. George W. Bush accused each other of ethical breaches as they battled for votes in a primary little more than a week away.

McCain’s complaint centered on a practice known as “push polling,” in which callers contact voters with what they contend is an opinion survey but which is really an exercise in denigrating their candidate’s opponent.

McCain has alleged for a week that the Bush camp was making such calls. But the issue assumed a higher profile Thursday when the mother of a 14-year-old McCain fan told the senator--and three dozen reporters and television crews--that her son had answered such a call and was devastated by what he heard.

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Speaking in a shaky voice at a town hall meeting here, Donna Duren said her son, Chris, considers McCain a hero and has grown so fond of the former Navy pilot he is considering attending the Naval Academy. On Wednesday night, she said, he took a phone call and then came to her.

“ ‘Mom,’ ” Duren said her son told her, “ ‘somebody told me that Sen. McCain is a cheat and a liar and a fraud.’ ”

“He was almost in tears,” Duren said.

Misty-eyed himself at the tale, McCain took the boy’s number and promised to give him a call.

“I’m calling on my good friend George Bush to stop this now,” McCain said. “Stop this now. He comes from a better family. He knows better than this.”

Bush responded quickly and sharply to the allegation. He said he did not know who had made the telephone call. But if it turned out to be someone working for his campaign, he said, “that person will be fired.”

“It’s one thing to battle for the vote,” Bush told reporters as he arrived at the Catawba Fish Camp, a venerable fried-fish restaurant in Fort Lawn, for a lunch with supporters. “But there is not authorization, and it’s not going to happen in my campaign, for calling him a liar. It’s just not right.”

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Bush communications director Karen P. Hughes said the campaign had hired a Phoenix-based firm to make several hundred telephone calls urging South Carolinians to vote for Bush. She released a script for the telephone calls that criticized McCain for “negative campaign tactics” but does not call him a liar.

The Bush camp was particularly nettled by McCain’s charge because they had hoped to grab news coverage Thursday for their own salvo against the Arizonan. Bush complained that McCain has transferred $2 million from his Senate campaign account to his presidential fund, even though he denounced the practice of rolling over money from one campaign to another.

“It’s one thing to say something; it’s another thing to do it in politics,” Bush said. “A campaign funding reformer must be held to high standards when it comes to his own campaign.”

Mike Murphy, McCain’s chief strategist, said Bush, who has raised more than $70 million thus far, is in no position to attack McCain. “Bush has been soaking the voters of Texas for months to conduct his campaign,” Murphy said.

The contretemps between the two candidates were another sign of the unrelenting hostilities that have overtaken the campaign since McCain defeated national front-runner Bush by more than 18 percentage points in last week’s New Hampshire primary.

Two Republicans have dropped out of the race since New Hampshire, including publisher Steve Forbes, who formally withdrew in a Washington news conference Thursday, saying, “We were nosed out by a landslide. But we have no regrets and neither should you.”

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The departures essentially left a two-man contest for the GOP nomination heading into the Feb. 19 primary here in South Carolina, now considered critical for both campaigns.

For McCain, Thursday was a day not only to upbraid Bush but also to feed from the hands he so often bites--those of corporate lobbyists, some of whose firms do business before the powerful Senate Commerce Committee, which McCain chairs.

Speaking via satellite from South Carolina, McCain sought contributions in 17 different cities, including Washington, where tickets sold for $500 and $1,000 apiece. At other events, people paid just $20 and $30 to attend.

He was also slated to chat via the Internet on Thursday evening with people who paid $100 to join the conversation. Together, the events were expected to bring in as much as half a million dollars.

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