Democrats pursue veterans' votes
CONCORD, N.H. -- The "feel your pain" moment came inside VFW Post 1631: Retired Army General Wesley K. Clark talked war wounds and Army life on a November afternoon, before a dozen veterans in folding chairs. Not a huge showing, to be sure; at least as many veterans lingered in an adjacent room, by the bar. But the ones who were seated were rapt, and not particularly happy with the Bush administration.
"We're not taking care of the veterans, and yet we're sending all of this money overseas," one man said, launching Clark into his standard critique of the war against Iraq.
Clark makes his pitch to fellow veterans in almost weekly visits to VFW posts and American Legion halls. Senator John F. Kerry, who served in the Navy in Vietnam, has held veterans' events in 11 states, and dispatched volunteers to lobby fellow vets. Front-runner Howard Dean, who has no military experience, has a staff member devoted to courting the veterans' vote, and a group called Veterans for Dean.
It has been a long time since veterans, who tend toward conservative views and voting patterns, have been considered anything but a reliable Republican constituency. But Kerry and Clark, in particular, are lobbying veterans vigorously this year, knowing they could be a crucial factor in early-voting states. Veterans make up 15 percent of the voting-age population in New Hampshire, Arizona, and New Mexico, and 14 percent in South Carolina.
Democrats nationwide say they see an unprecedented opportunity to win over veterans in the general election, based on fears about closures of VA hospitals, dissatisfaction with service benefits, and increasing discomfort with the progress of the Iraq war.
"There is no question that we sense an opening here," said Josh Earnest, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. "There's been a cascade of bad news on this issue."
Bush administration officials counter that they have taken steps to help soldiers and veterans. The officials point to the defense bill, signed by President Bush this week, that increases military salaries and addresses a century-old policy that reduces disabled veterans' retirement benefits by the cost of their disability pay. (Some veterans protest that the change will affect too few people and take effect too slowly.)
Bush officials also say the current strain on health benefits stems largely from a bill enacted during the Clinton administration that expanded eligibility for the government-provided services.
Of course, veterans groups raised concerns about government indifference long before Bush took office. "We've been universally harsh on administrations through the years," said Steve Thomas, spokesman for the American Legion.
Still, some veterans say they are particularly frustrated by the Bush administration this year because of news reports about delays in service for troops returning from Iraq, and concerns about proposed changes in the VA hospital system.
James F. McKinnon, who cochaired Bush's New Hampshire veterans' steering committee in 2000, refused that role this year.
"I told them I could not support the president," McKinnon said. "He's done nothing but hurt veterans since he's in office."
Instead, McKinnon joined Clark's New Hampshire steering committee, spurred by a call from Hershel Gober, the former secretary of veterans affairs under Bill Clinton, who is now national director of Veterans for Clark. The Kerry campaign has enlisted its own luminaries, including Max Cleland, the former senator from Georgia who lost both legs and one arm in Vietnam.
The Clark and Kerry camps have been jostling of late over whose military background has more inherent appeal to veterans: the three decades Clark spent rising through the Army ranks, or Kerry's harrowing experience commanding a patrol boat in Vietnam -- followed by his work, over the years, on veterans legislation.
When MSNBC's Chris Matthews recently asked Kerry if Clark was a "headquarters guy and you're a field guy," Kerry agreed. "He has generally been. No, he was in the field at one point, but very little in his career."
Clark's campaign shot back with a news release titled, "Clark Communications Director to Kerry: `Huh?' " and touting Clark's seven months in Vietnam and his rise to the military's highest ranks. Clark, talking to reporters in Manchester on Wednesday, made the case for his own experience: "I think my record speaks for itself. I stayed with the US armed forces after I came home in a stretcher, after a lot of people left."
But a bigger hurdle for Kerry could be the antiwar activism that launched his political career.
"It just kind of leaves a bad taste in my mouth with his coming back and throwing away his medals," said John Rubery, a Vietnam veteran from Manchester who is supporting Clark. "It was almost like he had turned his back on his fellow Vietnam veterans."
Kerry has said that he threw his own ribbons, but someone else's medals, at an antiwar protest in Washington in 1971.
McKinnon said he also dislikes Kerry for opposing an issue close to his heart, a constitutional amendment that would ban desecration of the American flag.
But the flag debate also proves that courting veterans can carry political risks. On Veterans Day, Clark responded to a veteran's question at an American Legion post in Manchester by saying he would support the flag amendment. While veterans in the room were pleased, some of Clark's liberal supporters were dismayed.
Veterans and nonveterans might forever disagree on the flag issue, specialists in military-civilian relations say. And that divide underscores perhaps the biggest challenges Democrats are likely to face in courting veterans and military officers: the cultural gap.
Since the draft ended in the early 1970s, the armed forces have been filled with volunteers who tend to be conservative, said Diane H. Mazur, an Air Force veteran who studies civilian-military relations at the University of Florida School of Law. In 2000, she said, high-profile retired officers endorsed the Republican Party, and military absentee ballots helped to tip the scale for the Republicans in the Florida recall.
"The Republican Party felt that it had an ally in the military, and the military felt that it had an ally in the Republican Party," she said.
Social issues made the difference this year for Paul Chevalier, 66, a Marine Corps veteran who was Senator John McCain's veterans coordinator in New Hampshire in 2000. This year, he said, he was courted by most of the Democratic campaigns. In the end, he joined Bush's steering committee, largely because he disagrees with the Democrats' stands on abortion and gay marriage.
Besides, he said, he does not like the way the Democrats have been talking about the commander in chief -- especially during a war.
"I think that all of the negativism going on right now by all of the Democrats is hurting our guys over there," Chevalier said. "I really do believe that." 