Veterans' bond is boost for Kerry
DES MOINES -- The call came into the Kerry headquarters in Washington on Friday. A retired police officer wanted to help the campaign. He had a special reason: John F. Kerry saved his life on the Bay Hap river, pulling him to safety while the banks erupted with gunfire.
James Rassman had retired to Oregon and devoted himself to growing orchids. A news junkie, he followed Kerry's Senate career and the launch of his drive for the White House. He was unaware that journalists and historians were eager to talk to him, that he, Rassman, was a missing piece of the biographical puzzle of a man who wants to be president.
But when Rassman heard that the Iowa campaign was coming to the wire, he wondered if he might help.
Yesterday, before hundreds of microphones, he and Kerry embraced for the first time in 35 years. Rassman's sincerity and Kerry's tact took a potential Jerry Springer moment and turned it into an eloquent testimony to the bonds of war.
Rassman comes at a moment when the four leading Iowa contenders are rallying supporters for a final get-out-the-vote drive. The conventional wisdom is that Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri and former Vermont governor Howard Dean have the best ground troops, because unions are rallying their members to support them.
Kerry's response has been to call in veterans. Kevin Bowen, 56, of Dedham, was a volunteer for Representative Jim Shannon in his race against Kerry for the Democratic senatorial nomination in 1984. In the closing days of the campaign, veterans rallied strongly for Kerry, beating Shannon's establishment-backed team. But Bowen, an Army veteran, wasn't dismayed.
"It was part of the coming of age of Vietnam veterans as a force," Bowen said. Friday night, a bus arrived at Kerry's headquarters carrying Bowen and about 40 other Massachusetts veterans who had traveled 28 1/2 hours, night and day, to help Kerry.
They were met by an equal number of Iowa veterans. One of Kerry's Navy buddies, Gene Thorson of Ames, Iowa, had put out a letter declaring, "You know as well as I do that when you follow a great leader on the battlefield, it leaves a mark on you that you carry for the rest of your life."
Kerry is calling upon a loyalty that's deeper than politics. It's the bond that has led Vietnam veterans in the Senate such as Kerry, as well as Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, to craft legislation outside party boundaries. It's what led Hagel and McCain to condemn their own party for campaign attacks on the patriotism of former senator Max Cleland of Georgia, a Vietnam vet who lost his legs and an arm in the war.
On Monday, the Kerry campaign hopes to round up 10,000 veterans to go to the caucuses, enough to potentially account for 8 percent of the total caucus vote.
"There's 1,100 just within one and a half miles of my VFW hall," said Navy veteran John Harlan of Des Moines. "I see them coming from all over the place."
The unions may have a superior organization, but no one owes his life to AFSCME: James Rassman is normally a diehard Republican, but there's no doubt whom he'll support. And he plans to convince many others.
