FARMINGTON -- Franklin County residents and students crowded into the University of Maine at Farmington's student center Wednesday to hear Andre Heinz talk about the presidential campaign and explain where his step-father, John Kerry, stands on education, the environment, and the economy.

He spoke to crowd of more than 200 that included high school and college students, faculty and area residents interested in hearing the first major spokesman from either the Bush or Kerry campaign to come to Farmington.

"I wanted to hear what he had to say, and I thought he did a good job answering questions and connecting with people," said Mt. Blue High School sophomore Nick Peruffo afterwards as he stood with classmates Cameron Salisbury and Ryan Long.

Today, Heinz will stop at Unity College at 11 a.m. and Colby College at 1 p.m.

Brandon Maheu, a member of the UMF chapter of the College Democrats who helped organize the event, said the crowd far exceeded his expectations and was the largest for Heinz so far in the state.

"There is a lot of organizing going on to get out the youth vote this year. Nationally, there was a poor voter turnout in the 18-25-year-old age group for the 2000 presidential election and we don't want that to happen again," he said.

Heinz is the Kerry campaign's leading spokesman on the environment. He has a master's degree from Yale University's School of Forestry and works for a Swedish-based company that advises government entities like the European Union and the United Nations and corporations such as Nike and McDonald's on environmentally sustainable business models.

Heinz criticized the Bush administration's environmental record and its rollback of enforcing such legislation as the federal Clean Air Act , championed by former Maine Sen. George J. Mitchell.

"The Bush Administration has conducted an unprecedented assault on environmental protections that have been in place for the past 30 years," Heinz said.

Kerry, he said, believes America can become oil-independent and be a world leader in renewable energy and clean technologies. Initiatives funded through businesses tax credits.

And he drew cheers from the audience when he described Kerry's education plan to expand access to higher education, which has increased 50 percent in the past four years. He said Kerry proposes a tax break on up to $4,000 of tuition for every year of college and a national service AmeriCorps program where 500,000 people will be eligible for college assistance in return for community service. The programs would not come from taxes but by eliminating subsidized profits for banks that would have to bid in an open auction for the student loan business.

Maine Republican Executive Director Dwayne Bickford issued a statement Wednesday charging the Kerry campaign with "rhetoric that simply does not match reality."

He said under President Bush, "Our air is cleaner and our water is purer. At $1.8 billion, the National Park Service's current operating budget is 20 percent higher than in 2001, and allocates more money per employee, per acre, and per visitor than at any time in its history."

"With each new day John Kerry and his supporters grow more desperate to talk about anything except what matters most to Maine voters: winning the war on terror and growing the U.S. economy," according to the release.

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