War Veterans Fight Over New Hampshire Voters
By MAEVE RESTON - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
DURHAM, N.H. -- Their stories are now almost legendary among New Hampshire voters.
A young Navy lieutenant named John Kerry steered his patrol boat through enemy fire on Vietnam's Bay Hap River and pulled a fellow soldier from the swirling waters to safety. Another junior officer, Wesley Clark, was ambushed in the jungles of Vietnam but led his men out of harm's way after taking bullets in the hand, shoulder and calf.
These stories of wartime heroism and the impressive resumes of the Massachusetts senator and the retired Army general have left some undecided New Hampshire voters torn with only days to go before Tuesday's primary election.
Other Democratic presidential candidates certainly remain in contention in New Hampshire, especially the second- and third-place winners in the Iowa caucuses, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina and Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont. But sizable groups of undecided voters are appearing at Clark and Kerry events saying they have ruled out the others and are drawn to the foreign policy and military experiences of those two contenders _ backgrounds many believe will be critical to beating a wartime president.
Before the Iowa caucuses, it was Clark who was rising in New Hampshire as the favored alternative to then-front-runner Dean. Clark presented himself as an anti-war candidate adept at navigating the channels of diplomacy as the former NATO supreme allied commander in Europe. Some voters were comforted by the fact that he had already led a war in the 1990s to stop the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by Yugoslavia's former president, Slobodan Milosevic.
Kerry was almost an afterthought, a second-choice candidate from neighboring Massachusetts who was believed to be too closely associated with Washington and never seemed to gain steam in the state after slipping last summer.
But now, after Kerry's comeback win in Iowa, he and Clark seem to be fighting for many of the same undecided voters while siphoning off former Dean supporters.
Voters like Vincent Maniscalchi of Merrimack, N.H., who didn't consider Kerry before the Iowa caucuses, changed his mind Monday night.
"It's like the rising (from) the ashes for the phoenix," Maniscalchi said. "John Kerry sounds presidential, he sounds sincere."
"I think the military experience is excellent for both of them," said Linda Hodges, an independent voter and registered nurse from Nashua. "I think the international experience with Wesley Clark is strongly in his favor. And Kerry seems to be really coming into his element."
Even Millie Bonati, a retired independent voter from Hollis, who said she hadn't considered Kerry at first because he voted for the Iraq invasion, said her objections were beginning to soften after hearing his criticism of the president's handling of the war.
"I'm even with those two," Bonati said about Kerry and Clark. "They're starting on equal footing for me."
Tracking polls released by the Manchester-based American Research Group and by Zogby International on Wednesday seemed to mirror the fluidity of local voter preference.
In the American Research Group survey, Dean had dropped to 26 percent, Kerry moved up to 24 percent, and Clark to 18 percent. In the Zogby International poll, Dean had a two-point lead over Kerry with 25 percent, and Clark was in third at 16 percent.
And the similar themes in Kerry's and Clark's campaigns _ engaging other nations, extending health care to more Americans, enforcing environmental laws and tax policy _ may not help voters much.
One of the most marked policy contrasts between Dean and Kerry, for example, is on taxes. But Kerry and Clark would both repeal the Bush tax cuts for households making more than $200,000 while preserving tax breaks for the middle class.
Both candidates often use their military experience to argue that they are the best candidate to face off against Bush. Kerry's stock phrase is a jab at Bush's appearance in a flight suit under the "Mission Accomplished" banner on the USS Lincoln last spring. "I know something about aircraft carriers for real," he has often said.
In speeches Wednesday, the two men touched on many similar themes while touting their service to the country. And unlike Dean, who once again criticized his rivals in a morning rally with volunteers at his Manchester headquarters, both Kerry and Clark focused their attacks squarely on Bush.
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, shns.com.) |
