WASHINGTON, May 16 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush set the ball rolling on his 2004 re-election bid Friday by filing papers with the Federal Election Commission that would allow his campaign committee to engage in fundraising and other activities, the White House said.
Spokesman Ari Fleischer also said White House political director Ken Mehlman had been appointed manager of the re-election bid.
No date for Mehlman leaving his White House post was given.
Karl Rove, Bush's senior adviser and the man credited with steering him to Texas' gubernatorial mansion and later the White House, would remain at the White House, but Fleischer left open the question of involvement in one fashion or another.
"I would not anticipate that," Fleischer said when asked if Rove would leave the government payroll for the campaign team.
"No, I think that, as is traditional, there's areas in which people who, in the performance of their White House duties, are able to play roles in campaigns, per the rules, per the laws as set out by Congress."
Filing of the 8 pages of documents with the commission, he added, comes within about the same time frame of previous presidents doing so in their re-election bids.
"Today ... the legal structure for a re-election campaign was put in place as a result of the filing of what's called FEC Form 1 and FEC Form 2," Fleischer said. "These are the legal forms necessary so that the structure around which a campaign will eventually be built can begin to take place.
"This is the legal structure that is required, so that grass-roots activities can begin, the fundraising can begin. This is the required legal step that must be taken for other events to follow on."
Fleischer said a statement by the president announcing his re-election bid was a "follow-on event that would happen sometime substantially down the road -- no time soon."
Bush's campaign committee is formally titled "Bush/Cheney '04, Inc.
A fundraising letter would probably be sent out soon to begin the effort to garner money for the campaign, Fleischer said, and "there may be a presidential event to raise money - not this month, but next month."
