OTTAWA - Stephen Harper walked his nine-year-old daughter Rachel to school Tuesday in a carefully scripted photo-op designed to bolster his new warm and fuzzy image.

With news cameras rolling, a bespectacled Harper, sporting a blazer and slacks, strolled hand-in-hand with his smiling daughter amid a cluster of cameras, aides and plainclothes Mounties.

Harper twice leaned in as though he was going to give young Rachel a peck on the forehead, but then settled on a one-armed squeeze and two quick pats on her shoulder before she dashed off to the playground.

It was a step up from the last time Harper dropped off his kids with media in tow.

In that instance, Harper's first day as prime minister in January 2006, he said goodbye to Rachel and son Ben with a dutiful handshake.

Harper spokesman Kory Teneycke characterized Tuesday's send-off -- which was set up in advance by the Prime Minister's Office -- as "a loving father taking his daughter to school, something he does frequently."

In hopes of softening his image as a cold partisan, recent Conservative campaign ads have shown Harper wearing a powder-blue sweater vest as he chats about his kids, his love of the North and his respect for war veterans.

Indeed, the garment has become an enduring symbol of the Harper campaign.

Reporters travelling with the prime minister christened his aircraft Sweater-Vest Jet, while comedian Mary Walsh burned a sweater vest on a Newfoundland beach Tuesday to protest Conservative cuts to arts and culture funding.