Kerry and Edwards to launch last stage of campaign

4.00pm - By DAVID USBORNE

NEW YORK - The Democratic candidates are not taking the assaults from the Republicans lying down - or windsurfing as John Kerry was at the beginning of the week.

One hour after George Bush was due to finish his speech in New York, Mr Kerry and running mate John Edwards were to be back on the trail.

The two challengers were expecting a large, late-night crowd in Springfield, Ohio, where they will launch the last stage of their campaign leading to election day in November. After their joint appearance, they will split.

Mr Kerry will remain in Ohio, a critical state, for two days. Mr Edwards will tour other Midwest states over the weekend.

Taking the offensive earlier yesterday was Mr Edwards, making the rounds of the morning radio and television shows. Reacting to merciless attacks on Mr Kerry by Dick Cheney and Senator Zell Miller at Madison Square Garden on Thursday, he scorned the Republicans for negative campaigning.

"What we heard from the Republicans in that hall last night was an enormous amount of anger," he said on CBS's 'The Early Show'.

"If you got up and went to the refrigerator to get a Diet Coke, you would have missed any discussion of what they're going to do about health care, what they're going to do about jobs, what they plan to do about this mess in Iraq."

Campaigning in Pennsylvania earlier, he accused the Bush administration of leading the nation from "the edge of greatness to the edge of the cliff."

The Kerry-Edwards campaign was meanwhile preparing to launch an intensive, multi-million-dollar television advertising blitz in several key states in an attempt to dampen any post-Convention boost hoped for by the Republicans.

- INDEPENDENT