Decorated officers Kerry, Clark fight for vets' votes
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By Eric Slater and Maria L. LaGanga
Los Angeles Times
Monday, January 26, 2004, 07:40 A.M. Pacific
MANCHESTER, N.H. — War hero, former senator and triple combat amputee Max Cleland sat on a small stage recently and told New Hampshire why one veteran is the veteran to vote for.
"Those of us who are veterans of this great country know and love John Kerry for many, many reasons," Cleland told the crowd. "But the best thing we can call him is brother. Why? Because he's been there, done that and gotten a few holes in his T-shirt."
But Kerry is not the only man who has been there, done that and is angling for the Democratic presidential nomination in New Hampshire's primary tomorrow.
"Wesley Clark has led an army," Brian Hardy, the head of a Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter, told a crowd, "and administered to the health, housing and education needs of hundreds of thousands of military families across the globe."
New Hampshire is the first political battleground on which Kerry, a former Navy lieutenant, has faced off against Clark, a former Army general, fighting for what they both view as a coveted bloc of voters. Clark sat out the Iowa caucuses, ceding the Hawkeye State's military might to Kerry.
There are 140,000 former troops in New Hampshire, and 26 million nationwide.
Many veterans here say they are delighted to have two of their own in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.
"If your job is to seek Democratic votes from veterans, it's going to be much easier this year than in 2000," said Duke University political scientist Peter Feaver, who studies the politics of the military world.
Democrats believe President Bush may have lost support from veterans when, among other perceived missteps, his administration sought to cut access to Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals in its proposed fiscal 2004 budget. In addition, House Republicans, on the day before the war in Iraq was launched, proposed a budget that called for $28 billion in cuts from veterans programs over 10 years.
Kerry and Clark regularly try to exploit these and other Bush actions.
Kerry regularly chides the president for going to Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day. "The very next morning," Kerry says, "the newspapers were full of a story of how 1.2 million veterans were being pushed off the VA because they were raising their enrollment fees and co-pays (for health care) to a level that many of them couldn't afford."
Clark tells audiences, "I don't think it's patriotic to dress up in a flight suit and prance around on the deck of an aircraft carrier," referring to Bush's appearance on the USS Lincoln last spring, when he declared major combat over in Iraq. It's a line that frequently gets the biggest cheer of Clark's speech.
Still, most observers think Bush will be the man to beat for the veterans' vote, regardless of which Democrat he goes up against. According to a recent poll of career military personnel by the Military Times, about 57 percent of respondents said they voted Republican, 13 percent Democrat, and 18 percent independent. Eleven percent declined to answer.
To capture the support of veterans, the candidates must emphasize foreign affairs and security issues, as well as veterans' concerns over such issues as military pay and the frequency of overseas deployments.
One dilemma Clark and Kerry face, according to Duke University political scientist Christopher Gelpi, is that polls show voters are more concerned with domestic issues than the war in Iraq, and concerns over deployments, pay and veterans benefits are niche issues that don't appeal much to other voters.
Yet Kerry's campaign credits much of its success in Iowa to the network of veterans who manned phone banks and tapped other voters to turn out at the caucuses.
Both Kerry and Clark served in Vietnam. Both were wounded. Both received the Silver Star for combat valor. Clark went on to become a four-star general and the supreme allied commander of NATO forces before retiring in 2000 after 34 years in the Army. Kerry's résumé includes 35 years of public service, a seat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and co-founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America.
Each has complimented the other for being a distinguished public servant. Each also works hard on the stump to persuade veterans that he is the strongest leader on national security, health care, pay for service members and other military benefits.
But Clark has increasingly contrasted his "executive leadership" with Kerry's legislative experience, while the Kerry campaign notes that the Massachusetts senator has been an advocate for veterans since returning from the war in Vietnam.
But thus far, both have aimed most of their firepower at Bush, deriding his policies and contrasting their experience in foreign policy with his.
"While some people are busy giving speeches about freedom and speeches about pride in those who served, they have proposed cutting the VA budget by $1.8 billion," Kerry said Friday.
Bush "didn't do enough to protect us before 9-11, and after 9-11 he took us into a war we didn't have to fight," Clark said at a speech just a few miles away.
The only military-related dispute so far between the vying vets broke out last week when Clark said of Kerry, "He's a lieutenant and I'm a general." Clark later said he meant to contrast Kerry's experience with his own, not diminish it.
But the rivalry seems to be growing.
"We're gonna teach (Clark) in South Carolina: There are more lieutenants than there are generals," Sen. Fritz Hollings, a World War II veteran, called out Friday when he appeared with Kerry.
"An Army guy and a Navy guy in a fight for the presidency — this could get nasty," said Vietnam veteran Mark Mariano. "We're talking big guns."
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