Republican Veterans For Kerry Picks Up Steam
Page 2 of 2 -- Yesterday, one such Republican -- John Nussbaum of De Pere, OK -- announced he was switching his allegiance to Kerry in the general election. Nussbaum, who, like Kerry, received a Silver Star while in Vietnam, described himself as a third-generation Republican.
"I voted three times for a man named Bush in previous presidential elections," said Nussbaum. With his voice choking with emotion, he added: "Today I can no longer support the current leadership. My vote is for the man who has demonstrated courage and integrity and who I believe will best lead our country in this time of war, Senator John Kerry."
John Hurley, the Massachusetts lawyer who is spearheading Kerry's veterans outreach, said afterwards: "The number of Republican veterans who come to us and say they voted for George W. Bush in 2000 is huge; it's not just one or two. . . . Veterans were a huge part of our success in Iowa and New Hampshire, and we believe they can be as well this fall."
Kerry was introduced yesterday by Jim Rassmann, the retired California policeman who was reunited with the senator two days before the Iowa caucuses and whose story of being rescued by Kerry in Vietnam was credited with a last-minute boost at the polls. He, too, previously voted Republican, but does not plan to do so this fall, he said.
In his remarks, Kerry accused the administration of starving the Veterans Administration of $1.8 billion, on top of the proposed cut next year, which was reported this week by The Washington Post after it obtained a secret Office of Management and Budget memo."Over a trillion of the last tax cut is going out to the wealthiest Americans, and we're starving the VA for $1.8 billion," he said.
The Bush-Cheney committee challenged that assertion and highlighted a recent report by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. The center recently produced a campaign FactCheck that asserted that "funding for veterans is going up twice as fast under Bush as it did under [President] Clinton."
The Globe asked the Kerry campaign for documentation supporting the senator's contentions, and a campaign spokeswoman cited a study portraying the administration's budget requests as falling short of what the VA needs.
Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com. |
