Lansing, Mich. ? More than 1,500 Republican leaders and advocates from a dozen Midwestern states, including Kansas and Missouri, began gathering Thursday in Michigan to talk about re-electing President Bush and holding on to their congressional majorities in 2004.

Although most of the Republicans meeting on Mackinac Island will be from Michigan, 23 Republican National Committee members from 11 other states will attend, along with other party officials and activists from those states, said Michigan GOP Chairwoman Betsy DeVos.

“It traditionally kicks off a new election cycle, and it really begins energizing our grass-roots activists,” she said of the conference. “It starts to get people focused on the fact that, in slightly over a year, we have another election.”

That fact hasn’t escaped Bush, who has made Midwestern cities key stops in his travels this month.

Monday, he visited a coal-burning power plant in Monroe to promote new rules he said would make it easier for utilities to upgrade their plants and still improve the environment.

Two weeks ago, he traveled to three Midwestern cities — Kansas City, Mo., Richfield, Ohio, and Indianapolis — to announce his new focus on the manufacturing sector and talk about creating more jobs.

Of the states represented at the conference that cast at least 11 electoral votes in 2000, Missouri, Indiana and Ohio went for Bush, but Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois gave their electoral votes to Democrat Al Gore.

“The big pivotal states, the ones that he lost and the ones that are won, are the ones he has to focus on,” Michigan State University political scientist David Rohde said of Bush.

That makes the Midwest a crucial battleground for Bush in next year’s elections. DeVos said Republicans in states that backed Gore hoped to give Bush the edge in 2004.

The task of helping Bush win re-election has gotten tougher as Bush drops in national polls. According to a recent CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll, Bush’s job approval rating dropped to 52 percent, close to the lowest level of his presidency — 51 percent before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

While respondents in other polls say Bush has made the country safer, he generally gets poor marks on his handling of the economy.