ROGERS – Women voters want their communities and homes to be safe from terrorists, and that is the most important single campaign issue for them, according to speakers at a women’s rally Wednesday in Rogers for President Bush.

Featured speaker was Deena Burnett, widow of Tom Burnett, who died Sept. 11, 2001, after organizing fellow passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 in a counterattack upon terrorists who hijacked their airplane. The plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania, in part because the passengers waited until the plane was over a rural area before rushing the cockpit. Mrs. Burnett moved to Little Rock with her three daughters after her husband’s death, to be with family.

“It is necessary and comforting to have a strong leader like George W. Bush who values our place and role in the world” as a nation, Burnett told a group of at least 40 women, including Arkansas first lady Janet Huckabee, who met for the kickoff rally for the Arkansas “W is for Women,” a group of volunteers in the president’s re-election campaign. The group met in the Crumpet Tea Room in Rogers, which was selected in part as a business owned by a woman.

“Let him finish the job he started,” Burnett said of Bush.

The president’s record on terrorism does not match this rhetoric, Michael Cook, executive director of the Democratic Party of Arkansas, said Wednesday.

“He took us to war on dubious grounds that have not proven true, where our soldiers are being attacked on a daily basis,” Cook said. Bush administration figures also show that global terrorism has not gone down, either.

“Going to war in Iraq let al-Quida reorganize,” Cook said.

Speakers at the half-hour Rogers rally referred to fighting on “the terrorists’ home turf” and the invocation starting the meeting prayed for the troops “overseas,” but Iraq was not mentioned specifically.

On other issues, state Rep. Cecile Bledsoe, R-Rogers, told the group that twice as many new businesses are started by women as by men. There are 10 million businesses in the United States owned by women, she said. Those businesswomen have the same interest as other business owners in keeping Bush in office, she said.

Huckabee said Arkansas will play a “pivotal role” in the presidential election, and that women will play an important part in that.

Women support the president’s opposition to abortion, she said. “We have children because we want to, and we love them,” she said. Women support the legal carrying of firearms through the concealed carry permit, for instance. Women support “the sanctity of marriage” and oppose gay marriage.

The Democratic Party also issued a prepared response to Wednesday’s rally, which said the Bush administration’s budget freezes funding for maternal and child health and cuts funds for emergency shelters for abused women. It also said the administration has cut child care programs.