Losing female support, McCain alters approach

John McCain and Sarah Palin held a rally yesterday in Bethlehem, Pa. Polls indicate the candidate has lost any gains he made among women by making Palin his running mate. (Gerald Herbert/ Associated Press)

BETHLEHEM, Pa. - Senator John McCain returned to the campaign trail yesterday with new emphasis on a domestic agenda that appeared designed in part to address the concerns of white women, a crucial voting bloc that has moved steadily in recent weeks toward his rival, Barack Obama.

After his second debate with Obama on Tuesday night, McCain and running mate Sarah Palin held events in Pennsylvania and Ohio where he stressed healthcare and homeownership - both issues that women, especially independent white women, have cited as important in their choice of a candidate.

"The dream of owning a home should not be crushed under the weight of a bad mortgage," McCain said at a rally here at Lehigh University, where he began his speech with remarks about a new proposal to bail out homeowners carrying underwater mortgages.

Obama has built up support among women that approaches the level of female support for the last successful Democratic candidate, Bill Clinton, when he won his second term in 1996. In both the presidential races that followed, George W. Bush made inroads among women voters that helped him defeat successive Democratic challengers.

Republican officials now are looking for ways to bolster homeownership - and have recognized the issue's political appeal to women.

"It's a pressing issue for all of us, and especially independent female voters," said Republican National Committee chairman Mike Duncan.

And two McCain aides who were trumpeting the plan, under which the Treasury Department would spend $300 billion to buy up mortgages and renegotiate their terms, volunteered that it was modeled on a similar plan proposed by Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries.

After remaining silent on the plan during Tuesday's debate, Obama yesterday came out against McCain's mortgage proposal, claiming it would be too costly to taxpayers. "The biggest beneficiaries of this plan will be the same financial institutions that got us into this mess," policy adviser Jason Furman said in a statement.

Even though healthcare is not directly connected to the financial crisis, both candidates have been speaking about their health proposals in recent days, an issue that aides for both campaigns say resonates particularly strongly with women. The turn was particularly novel for McCain, typically more comfortable talking about fiscal and taxpayer concerns.

"On healthcare, people got a better understanding of how our healthcare plan differs from Senator Obama's, and it's an area of tremendous interest to women," said McCain strategist Charlie Black.

Public and private polling indicates that McCain has lost any gains made among women since late August when he chose running mate Palin, the Alaska governor who now appears more popular among men than women.

Much of the initial fascination with Palin, the first female Republican vice presidential nominee, has been overshadowed by economic news.

"We've lost 2,000 points on the market since Sarah Palin's speech at the convention," said McCain campaign manager Rick Davis.

An Oct. 1 survey released by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press showed Obama now leading McCain by 17 percentage points among women, up from 10 points two weeks earlier. That movement is largely among white women; Obama has maintained a steady advantage among African-Americans of both sexes.

"The economy is scaring the heck out of working women," said Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat.

A poll of women across 16 competitive states released this week by Women's Voices Women's Votes, an independent group that backs Democratic candidates, showed Obama doing best among the younger and unmarried.

Obama leads among single women by 29 percentage points, and is running even among married women, a demographic that boosted Bush in his 2004 reelection.

That year, pollsters conjured the profile of "security moms," married women with children who made national-security issues a priority after the Sept. 11 attacks.

After this September's financial crisis, some political analysts expect that a similar instinct - seeking a trusted paternal figure in a time of uncertainty - will apply to domestic concerns.

Both candidates have worked in recent weeks to present themselves as stewards of economic stability.

"You have different senses of security: one is the protection sense, and the other is the home," said Duncan. "For a lot of people, it's the biggest asset they own and we're going to help people stay in it."

Obama has also recast much of his economic agenda in terms targeted at women. At a rally yesterday in Indianapolis, Obama specifically named mammograms and maternity care among the treatments that he said McCain's healthcare plan would allow insurers not to cover.

During the debate, Obama repeatedly tied federal spending to household finances.

"Most of the people here, you've got a family budget. If less money is coming in, you end up making cuts. Maybe you don't go out to dinner as much. Maybe you put off buying a new car," he said when asked who was to blame for the economic crisis. "That's not what happens in Washington."

At their convention in August, Democrats who once used social issues and Supreme Court nominations to rally women largely avoided mention of abortion, and talked up equal-pay and workplace-discrimination policies instead.

Yet Obama has maintained a quieter but aggressive campaign through mail and radio ads to claim that his opponent "will make abortion illegal." McCain's strategists have conceded that the candidate's opposition to abortion has hurt his standing among suburban women.

Many analysts had expected Palin to attract more female supporters after her surprise selection by McCain, but her support is now greater among men than women.

According to the latest Pew poll, 34 percent of women said that Palin is ready to serve as president, compared with 40 percent of men. Those numbers were down sharply from two weeks earlier, when 52 percent of men and women found her qualified.