Wednesday, Sept. 29, 2004 | 11:05 a.m.
First lady Laura Bush touted her husband's optimism and dedication to empowering women during her stop Tuesday in Henderson.
The message resonated with the mostly female audience of more than 2,000 Bush supporters, many of whom waved blue "W Stands for Women" signs that had been provided to them by the campaign.
Women continue to be a key demographic in this campaign, largely because they represent the largest number of undecided voters.
The partisan crowd at the Henderson Pavilion Center awarded Laura Bush with loud whoops when she talked about her husband's work to give women more say in the world, from the White House to the workplace to Afghanistan.
The Bush administration has more women in senior positions than any other administration in history, Bush said, pointing to her husband's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and domestic policy assistant, Margaret Spellings.
"We all know that empowered women are vital to the democracy," Bush said. "This should be clear to us today when we look around the world, where half of the population is left out."
She pointed out that women in Afghanistan are no longer confined to their homes, thanks to the United States' efforts in the country.
"The little girls of Afghanistan are in school," she said.
Bush, a former librarian, has always pushed literacy and education efforts. But in the past few months she has taken a special interest in women-owned businesses, touring businesses around the country.
Ten million women in America own their own businesses, and more women are entering college or going back to school to train for new jobs, Bush told her audience in Henderson.
"And when these women go to work, I'm proud to say, a lot of them will go to work for a woman boss," she said.
Blanche Auspitz, a semi-retired real estate agent who just moved to Las Vegas from New Jersey, was impressed by the first lady.
"She is such an elegant woman," Auspitz said. "I wanted to see if she stood up to what I thought she was."
Sandy Owens, whose husband runs his own subcontracting company, was also in the audience. She said the Bush tax cuts have helped her and her family, but she also wanted to see if Laura Bush lived up to her expectations.
"She's a great supporter of her husband," Owens said. "I really admire how she looks after him."
Bush told the crowd that she and her husband grew up in West Texas, where the skies -- and the possibilities -- seemed to stretch on forever.
"My husband brings that optimism, that sense of purpose, that certainty that better days are before us, to his job every day," she said. "With your help he'll do it for four more years."
It was one of the many times Bush used the word "optimism" to describe her husband, whom she predicted would do well at Thursday's first presidential debate.
"This Thursday night in Miami, the American people will see the strong, decisive man I've know for the last 27 years, a man who says what he means and does what he says," she said.
Bush's tax cuts have given all Americans more money in their pockets, allowing them to spend it as they choose, including to invest more in their businesses, the first lady said.
President Bush will work to make the cuts permanent and help train more workers for the jobs of the future, she said.
"Millions of families and small business owners are spending more of their own money because the president worked to pass the largest tax relief in a generation," she said.
Before the rally, Bush briefly toured the Mammovan, a roaming van that offers free mammograms, breast exams and Pap smears to low-income people who wouldn't normally have access to the preventative tests.
About 10,000 women have been screened around the state in the Mammovan since it started rolling four years ago, and 36 were diagnosed with breast cancer, said Paula Guzman, community outreach coordinator for Nevada Health Centers, a nonprofit group that runs the Mammovan and other health initiatives.
Those women were then linked to treatment through Nevada Health Centers, Guzman said.
Bush later called the van an "exceptional service" and told the crowd that "education, preventative screening and early detection can save lives."
This is the first lady's third visit to Nevada this year. She held her first solo rally of the campaign season in May at UNLV.
In February she visited Advanced Technologies Academy in Las Vegas, where she talked about training students for jobs needed in the future, a theme she and her husband both discuss frequently on the campaign trail.
President Bush visited Reno for a rally in June, and he gave a speech to the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of American training building in Las Vegas in August.
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