Veterans cast their votes for presidential candidates

Nick Keppler Staff Writer

It was the kind of thing campaign managers daydream about.

Last… Nick Keppler Staff Writer

It was the kind of thing campaign managers daydream about.

Last January, Jim Rassman, a retired Los Angeles police officer, made a phone call to the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. While serving with Kerry on a swift boat in the Vietnam War, Rassman said, a landmine knocked Rassman off the boat. He struggled to avoid enemy fire from the riverbanks until Kerry jumped in and pulled him to safety. Kerry was awarded a Silver Star for the incident.

Thirty-five years later, Rassman asked Kerry how he could help him become president.

Rassman’s call could not have come at a more dire time for Kerry. He was struggling to beat former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, whose vast grass-roots support made him a favorite for the Democratic nomination. Kerry mortgaged his Boston home to bolster his campaign’s war chest and resorted to stunts like riding a motorcycle onto the stage of the Tonight Show and dropping the f-bomb in a Rolling Stone interview.

Kerry and Rassman shared an emotional and well-publicized reunion the weekend before the Iowa caucuses — and the start of the primary election. Their meeting may have helped boost Kerry into first place in Iowa, igniting a winning streak that landed him the nomination.

Since then, Kerry and his campaign have forged a battle for the hearts and minds of veterans, a group Kerry calls his “band of brothers.” Rassman has become a staple of Kerry campaign stops and TV ads. Men in “Veterans for Kerry” T-shirts often join Kerry onstage at campaign stops, and Kerry has appointed a veteran volunteer coordinator in each state, aiming to recruit one million veterans.

Veterans are more likely to vote than the general population, but their support also has symbolic significance, according to Pitt political science professor Donald Goldstein, who had a 22-year army career and served in Korea and Vietnam.

“If soldiers — people who fought and bled for this country — think [a candidate] is the right guy, other people will think he’s something special,” Goldstein said.

But the veteran vote is complicated.

The nation’s 25.6 million veterans are more Republican than Democrat, according to a Duke University study, and George W. Bush possesses an advantage because he is a wartime president. Fifty-six percent of veterans back President George W. Bush, opposed to 38 percent who support Kerry, according to a University of Pennsylvania survey.

Bush’s lack of combat experience, his decision to deploy troops in a controversial war and his restructuring of veteran benefits may make his relationship with veterans complicated. But Kerry’s anti-war activities after returning from Vietnam still anger many veterans.

“He did some things he would not have done if he had known he was going to run for president,” Goldstein said.

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an anti-Kerry group, has reminded Americans of those things.

The group’s TV ads claim that Kerry lied about the endeavors for which he won three purple hearts and argue that Kerry “betrayed his country” when he accused fellow soldiers of atrocities against the Vietnamese people in a 1970 Congressional testimony.

“He got up in front of the country and aired their dirty laundry,” Goldstein said. “He broke a bond.”

Local Veteran Opinions Mixed On Kerry

“We don’t discuss politics down in the canteen,” said Chuck Krebes, commander of Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 456 in Pittsburgh’s Mt. Oliver neighborhood. The canteen is their headquarters’ fully stocked bar, where local veterans hang out.

But if a news report showing Kerry’s 1970 congressional testimony came on television, Krebes said, many vets would not be able to withhold their disgust.

Krebes, who served in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968, said veterans are mixed about Kerry. His military service is an asset, and while his antiwar activities still sting, many have come to terms with the era’s anti-war movement.

Bill Miller, a Vietnam veteran from the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Carrick, has not.

“We had no support,” Miller said, referring to the atmosphere in the United States when he returned from Vietnam in 1969. “By the time [Kerry] testified before Congress, the whole country was against us.”

Miller said that Kerry’s testimony helped increase anti-veteran sentiment.

“He tried to make us all look like killers,” Miller said, adding that he doesn’t find Kerry’s constant references to his military service inspiring, but exploitive. “He was there four stinking months,” Miller said. “I was there 363 days.”

Miller, a “staunch conservative,” said he will definitely vote for Bush, and there is little Kerry could do or say to change his mind.

Another local veteran, Michael Bollister, who spent 29 months serving in the South Pacific during World War II, backs Kerry “100 percent.”

Bollister admires Kerry’s military service and thinks he would be a good commander in chief.

Bollister notes, regarding Kerry’s actions when he returned from Vietnam, that “there were a lot of others who did the same thing.” He added, “It was a time of great unrest … A lot of people call Vietnam a political war.”

He also feels the Kerry is justified in using his military servce in political ads.”

“He served; he bled,” Bollister said. “That’s his right.”

Bush Also Controversial to Veterans

Kerry is not the only candidate in whose Vietnam-era activities have come into question. President Bush served in the Texas Air National Guard during the war and never went overseas. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel and honorably discharged, but critics allege that his father’s influence saved him from active combat.

As president, Bush has deployed U.S. troops in a controversial war in Iraq. Alleged weapons of mass destruction have not been found, more than 1,000 U.S. troops have been killed, and 48 percent of Americans feel the war was a mistake, according to the Gallup polling organization.

“He’s the biggest fart there is,” local veteran Bill Davis said of Bush.

Davis is a white-haired World War II veteran, but he speaks about George W. Bush with the fury and venom of 20-year-old punk in a Rage Against the Machine T-shirt.

“He’s all gung-ho when other people are fighting but he wasn’t all gung-ho when he was supposed to be gung-ho,” Davis said, referring to Bush’s lack of combat experience.

“You’re the leader; you get in the front lines,” Davis added.

A lifelong Democrat, Davis said he never liked Bush, but his disdain increased after the launch of the Iraq war, which Davis feels was a mistake and was not adequately prepared for by Bush’s administration.

Veterans More Concerned About Benefits, Other Issues than Military Service

Will Kerry’s military service or his anti-war activities really affect the veteran vote? Will Bush’s lack of combat experience and questionable Guard record change things?

Many veterans say these issues aren’t important.

Bollister is voting for Kerry not because the man has three purple hearts, but because Bollister thinks Kerry has a better plan for Iraq and favors repealing Bush’s tax cuts, which Bollister thinks were irresponsible.

Miller is angry about Kerry’s protest activities, but he also supports Bush because he agrees with the decision to invade Iraq and thinks the tax cuts have stimulated the economy.

The National Veterans of Foreign Wars does not endorse candidates for public office, but the group has stated that it wants veterans to vote on issues, rather than biographical information.

And no veteran mentioned in this story said that he considers military service a deciding factor in his choice of candidates.

Goldstein pointed out that lack of combat experience is standard with prominent politicians; Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Texas, Vice President Dick Cheney and former President Bill Clinton also avoided Vietnam.

“If serving in Vietnam were a requirement, these guys could hardly vote for anyone,” Goldstein said of veteran voters.

From homeland security to succeeding in Iraq to bolstering the economy, veterans worry about the same issues as other Americans. They are different in only one respect: fervor over veteran benefits.

Last year, Bush’s administration opposed a Senate bill that would have increased spending for veteran health care by $1.3 million dollars, according to the Associated Press.

The administration announced last November a restructuring of veterans’ medical care, closing several veteran hospitals, including UPMC’s Veterans Affairs Medical Center, according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Expansions of facilities elsewhere in the city are planned.

According to Kerry’s Web site, Kerry plans to “fully fund veterans’ health care,” as well as to “fully equip and fairly compensate our troops on active duty, and protect their loved ones with a Military Family Bill of Rights.”

Bollister said this is another reason to vote for Kerry, while Miller said Bush’s changes honestly redistribute and do not cut benefits.

Krebes, who is an undecided voter, said these developments “deeply disturb” him, adding that this issue may decide the veteran vote.

“We don’t care about what you did in the past,” Krebes said of the candidates. “What are you going to do for us as president?”