McCain: AARP Connects With Generation X

It’s 2:30 a.m. in a cavernous airplane hangar on the outskirts of this vibrant New South city. Hip-hop music blasts from 10-foot-tall speakers. Psychedelic turquoise and purple images flutter against the walls. Hundreds of college students surge to thumping bass.

Dressed all in black, 20-year-old Lauren Hardy is caught in the frenzy, waiting to see the evening’s star attraction. Finally, he arrives on a bus that pulls right to the edge of the throbbing crowd. The door opens and out pops John McCain, white hair and dark suit contrasting with the sea of youthful faces and baggy pants before him.

This is no rave. It’s a predawn political rally with McCain playing the role of DJ Maverick, ready to raise the roof with a stump speech about campaign finance reform.

Hardy goes wild.

“He’s genuine. He’s happy to be here. And he’s a bad ass,” she says, frantically waving an American flag.

McCain has made attracting young voters a centerpiece of his campaign strategy, on its face a politically unwise reach for a cohort more apt to apathy than polity. But if New Hampshire is any indication, so far, it has worked.

A Times’ exit poll found that 18- to 29-year-olds voted more strongly for McCain than any other age group, with 56% saying they cast ballots for McCain. That’s more than double George W. Bush’s showing and even more than either of the two Democratic contenders managed to lock down among young people voting in that contest.

On the downside, the exit poll also highlighted a serious pitfall in McCain’s strategy: Young people don’t turn out, especially for conservative candidates. While 11% of the voters in the New Hampshire Republican primary were 18 to 29, that group comprises 15% of New Hampshire’s population. Nationally, the numbers are even worse. In 1996, for instance, 32% of young voters showed up at the polls versus nearly 50% of all voters.

Character Counts With Young Voters

“Younger voters don’t vote in comparison to their percentage in the populace,” said Dick Bennett, president of American Research Group, a polling company.

Political experts attribute McCain’s strong showing to a single fundamental quality: his character. For a generation that was born during Watergate, raised during Iran-Contra and arrived to adulthood in the middle of the Monica S. Lewinsky and Clinton-Gore fund-raising scandals, McCain’s war hero background and outsider reputation represent a break from a dispiriting norm.

“The core of his message and his style of frankness appeal to younger voters,” said Jonathan Cowan, a lecturer on youth in politics at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “Younger voters--18 to mid- to late-30s--are non-ideological and turned off by traditional politics. They look for political leaders who speak in a way that connects to their lives. McCain appears to be doing that.”

If that’s so, McCain is perhaps the most unlikely of youth magnets since Tony Bennett became a Gen X fave a few years back. At 63, he is three times older than many of the college students who turn out in droves to see him. Many of his hard-core conservative views clash with the younger set. And, despite a joke that he listens to Nine Inch Nails, the former POW freely admits forcing his family to listen to an all-oldies radio station on the weekends.

McCain shares traits with another political figure who has drawn younger voters: Jesse Ventura, the former professional wrestler who rode a wave of younger and independent voters into the Minnesota governor’s mansion.

Both men are perceived as outsiders bent on reform. McCain even jokes about the similarities, claiming he once wore a feather boa on the floor of the Senate.

McCain’s maverick status, experts say, also attracts young voters, who tend to be more independent than older voters.

“McCain’s anti-establishment message and genuine persona are very attractive to younger voters,” said Daniel J. Palazzolo, a professor of political science at the University of Richmond in Virginia.

Indeed, young people clearly respond to his campaign speech. Wherever he goes, from New Hampshire cafeterias to Connecticut fund-raisers, twentysomethings always show up, sometimes in small numbers, sometimes in the hundreds. At the rally in South Carolina, more than 600 students showed up to greet him when he arrived after his landslide victory in New Hampshire.

When he holds a rally on a college campus, he gets a hero’s welcome, as he did at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., where he won a stunning 66% of the vote in a crowded Republican field, or at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. College students chant his name. They cheer his calls for government reform. They swarm him as he enters and swarm him when he leaves, waiting for a handshake or signature on his book.

McCain returns the enthusiasm. Not a rally goes by that he doesn’t mention that his chief reason for running is to “inspire a generation of young people to causes greater than their own self-interest.”

In numerous interviews over the last week, young voters said McCain’s history appeals to a generation brought up questioning the honesty of any politician.

A longing for integrity brought Ryan Jezdimir, 21, out to a Republican fund-raiser Monday night in Saginaw, Mich.

Jezdimir said he was planning to vote for McCain in Michigan’s Feb. 22 primary, more for McCain’s personality than his politics.

“I’m mostly going on character,” Jezdimir said. “I want someone I can respect and be proud of to say is my president.”

Another McCain characteristic that strikes home is his humor. Edgy, sometimes dark, it has the effect of adding to his credibility.

He jokes about stumping in a small town in New Hampshire for the same “crass” reasons as other politicians--in search of votes. Or he talks about his wife forcing him to name his children and their ages at each campaign speech, so he doesn’t forget.

Kyle Reniche, a 33-year-old attending a New Hampshire rally, said McCain’s jokes emphasized his honesty.

His humor “helps him get to the truthfulness of the issues,” Reniche said. “He hits the nail on the head on the cynicism among youth. That cynical sense of humor speaks to that. Young people are really adept at filtering out” lies.

One problem McCain may face is his conservative political agenda. So far, he has convinced younger voters that his character is important.

But in the general election, competing with Al Gore or Bill Bradley, he may have a tougher time wooing young voters who disagree with his policies.

Stand on Key Issues Could Blunt Appeal

Cowan, the youth expert, said younger voters may be choosing McCain during the primary season for the same reason they once flocked to Ross Perot: to send a message of dissatisfaction with the current system. But come the general election, that support might vanish.

“There’s a difference between sending a message and electing a president,” he said. “At some point, I’d guess that young voters will say, ‘I’d like to have somebody with McCain’s story, but if he starts off attacking my right to choose, I definitely won’t go for that.’ ”

Indeed, some younger voters said they couldn’t get past his conservatism, especially on topics such as abortion rights. Charles Miller, 28, attended a rally in Columbia, S.C., last week. He, too, said he liked McCain’s honesty. But he wasn’t sure he could vote for him as president.

“If we have a Republican Congress and a Republican president, a lot of stuff that he’s proposing is going to be crammed into our lives that’s unnecessary,” he said

Other young people simply don’t care.

At the McCain rave in Greenville, 19-year-old Patrick Moorhead slouched on the crowd’s edge, watching curiously as McCain arrived. He turned to leave shortly after McCain launched into his stump speech.

“I was out here for the band, but they ended up sucking,” he said. “Now we have to sit and watch this guy.”

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Times staff writer Eric Slater in Saginaw, Mich., contributed to this story.