The Age of the Aging Electorate

There they are, perhaps the most powerful voters in Campaign 2000, twirling along the linoleum dance floor as snow flurries fall outside and the Hrubes Band (an accordion player, a vocalist) turns “Me and Bobby McGee” into something akin to a polka.

Mavis and Clayton Burgart fox trot their way past folding chairs and resting dancers. Although comfortably retired farmers, the Burgarts still worry about paying for $300 in prescription drugs each month, $250 alone for a pill that lowers cholesterol.

And that’s not the only thing on their mind. Morality? None’s left, especially on television, harrumphs Mavis, 73. Farm policy? Ethanol is key and don’t anyone forget it. Social Security? “Leave it alone,” she insists. “It’ll pay for itself if they keep their hands off it and not use it to pay off the deficit.”

As the clock ticks down to the Jan. 24 Iowa caucuses and presidential candidates prowl the state like hungry cats, the conversation turns easily to politics, especially here at the Mason City Senior Activity Center’s weekly promenade. Like the so-called soccer moms of 1996--who drove the electoral debate toward family issues such as education and the difficult balance of work and home--seniors are expected to influence presidential politics as never before.

There is more behind the potential impact of Americans 65 and older than the fact that theirs is the only age group whose voting rate has increased in the last 25 years--by 6.5%, in fact, compared with the dismal drop of 34.7% for citizens ages 18 to 24.

Although baby boomers won’t start hitting 65 until 2012, America is aging at a rapid clip; issues dear to the hearts of the Burgarts and others like them are important now, and they will only get more crucial as Bill Clinton and Mick Jagger hit retirement age.

Politicians “recognize that the aging of the baby boomers is really something that ought to be dealt with,” says Robert H. Binstock, a professor of aging, health and society at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. “I do think politicians are being somewhat responsible about this, amazingly enough. . . . Old-age policies are certainly taking center stage.”

And they could stay there well into the next century. While it is risky to speculate about voting behavior, people 65 and older could make up as much as one-third of the potential voting pool by the mid-2030s, compared with 20.3% in the last presidential election. “This election does foreshadow what the national debate will be for a generation,” says John McCalley, Iowa Caucus Project coordinator for AARP.

Candidates from both parties are offering proposals from prescription drug benefits for seniors to allowing retirees to work without losing Social Security payments. A spate of just-launched television ads touts promises to cut inheritance taxes and protect entitlements for the elderly.

Pledge Signed in Both Parties

Democrats Al Gore and Bill Bradley, along with Republicans Orrin G. Hatch and Gary Bauer, have signed a pledge pushed by the national Long Term Care Campaign to “make addressing the long-term care crisis one of my administration’s top priorities” if elected president.

One hundred years ago, the average life span in this country was a brief 47 years. By 1996, that average had stretched to a full 76 years, thanks in large part to strides in medical technology; from 1950 to 1996, the number of people 65 and older nearly tripled to 33.9 million.

There are few states where the graying of America is more evident than here in Iowa, which has the fastest-growing population of seniors 85 and older of any state in the country. In addition, only four other states have a higher percentage of residents 65 and older than the Hawkeye State. In Iowa, 15.1% of residents are 65 or older, compared with much younger California, which has a senior population of 11.1%.

Add to that an active political culture, fostered by the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses, and it’s hard to find a better place to talk about voting, aging and duty, about politics and the most pressing needs of an aging America.

In dozens of interviews with Iowans in their 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, only a few admitted that they did not bother to cast a ballot. Raised in the shadow of World War II, most of the women and men interviewed consider voting to be well nigh sacrosanct; it is both duty and the price one pays to complain freely.

Nostalgia creeps into reedy voices when the conversation turns to Franklin D. Roosevelt versus Herbert Hoover, to winning a bet on Harry S. Truman’s victory, to the calf one man’s Republican father dubbed “Democrat” when FDR was first elected--no compliment, that.

“We have to have government. We have to have an organization. We have to have people you trust to do that,” argues Marie Raney, 80, explaining why she has not missed an election, as she waits for the dance to begin. “I have good friends in their 40s and 50s, and they don’t vote, and it just irritates me.”

Older Voters Not Seen as a Bloc

Binstock, the aging specialist, has spent decades studying the voting behavior of older Americans, and he does not believe that older voters cast their ballots as a bloc. The Depression was a formative period for many dedicated senior voters, for example. But many men and women whose prosperous adulthoods coincided with the Reagan years are 65 or older now, and they’re voting in large numbers also.

“It could be that you tend to value your vote more as you grow older,” he posits. In his upcoming paper, he also notes that registering to vote is a key indicator for casting ballots. Older people are far less transient than younger ones and tend to be registered in larger numbers.

Others note that older voters have more time to keep up with civic news and get to the polls than do the parents of school-age children, who must balance work and Little League with the obligations of citizenship.

As the Hrubes Band cranks out another dance tune, Loretta Diehl, retired schoolteacher and regular precinct worker, recalls that she has missed only a vote or two in her long and civic-minded life, like the time she lay near death with double pneumonia. “I feel it’s my duty as an American citizen,” she says with a quizzical look that broadcasts the unspoken question: Doesn’t everyone?

The answer, of course, is no. Younger voters increasingly disdain the electoral process. Although few pollsters and political scientists can agree about why, they do note that shooting wars and serious economic downturns tend to bring out voters in greater numbers.

The issues that generally create most comment these days are health care, Social Security and education, says Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. “Do you see any issues that will strike close to home for younger people? No,” says Smith. “If you have precious time on the campaign trail and only so much money for advertising, why spend it on someone who won’t pay attention?”

The kind of people who do pay attention had gathered at the senior center here one recent Wednesday afternoon to fox trot and fraternize. Snatches of conversation mingled with Patsy Cline’s greatest hits and the soft shuffle of slowing feet: My shoulder’s been acting up. . . . When tears come down like falling rain. . . . Is HE still farming? . . . Your cheating heart, will tell on you. . . . So, you ready for a fishing story?

They are retired farmers, former teachers, erstwhile office workers. They are Bill Clinton Democrats and Steve Forbes conservatives, well-heeled investors and those forced to be frugal.

Alex Groff, 76, likes to joke that he has so much metal in his knees since surgery that he can no longer kneel to take Communion. While he spends $1,300 a year for insurance to supplement Medicare--a big bite out of a fixed income--Social Security is this former meatpacker’s biggest beef.

Taxes, he complains, chip away at increases in Social Security benefits. “They reach in and grab it before you get the check,” he says of the government. “That ain’t right.”

A Catalog of Wonder Drugs

No matter how spry, how fit, how healthy, most of the women and men who dine and dance at the senior center take one of a catalog of wonder drugs that prolong their lives and empty their wallets. Medicare, the primary insurance for most people 65 and older, was designed before the latest waves of pharmacological innovation and does not cover most new drugs.

Charles Batridge, 77, pays some $250 a month for his medications. “I’ve got a nitroglycerin patch right there, right now.” He pats his chest. “I’ve got six different pills I take every day.”

At The Willows retirement community across town, few of the residents would disagree with their neighbors’ concerns. But what fires them up on a cold morning is campaign finance reform.

They sip coffee. They open mail. They fume about how much money changes hands for the dubious goal of electing rich men to high office. Harvey Koelder, 79, says that Texas Gov. George W. Bush “has got too much money,” and then he blushes. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said it, but it just flew right out.”

Beth Elder, 88: “It’s ridiculous to spend the money they spend on shooting hot air that isn’t worth listening to, when people are homeless and starving and the government is going into debt.”

Opal Mathre, 76, dubious and an avid consumer of political news: “It ends up the fellow with the most money wins. The commentators I listen to say Bush has got it.”

There is a small groundswell at The Willows for Alan Keyes, viewed as a sort of anti-politician, although the former ambassador is about as little-known here as he is in other parts of the country.

When Donald Olson, 80, grumbles that candidates “never do what they say they’re going to,” Arthur Kleve pipes up that that’s why he likes Keyes. “He’s true blue,” says Kleve, at 68, the baby here. “I don’t think he’s a politician. I think he’s the one who will do the most to get the country back on track morally.”

Olson: “Is that the black guy?”

It is indeed. And he’s not just true blue, they agree, but eloquent to boot. “I think he could turn a horse around in the middle of the street,” Mathre says.

The issue of morality is key to many older voters and one of the reasons, analysts say, that the Democratic Party has been losing its traditional advantage among seniors. Many pollsters believe that the Democrats could have regained control of Congress in 1998 had they not lost older voters who voiced disgust over the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.

“The Democratic advantage among seniors has been eroding during the ‘90s,” says Lawrence Jacobs, a political science professor at the University of Minnesota who specializes in aging policy.

In addition to moral issues, Jacobs says, the Republican Party has attracted many older voters because it has “changed strategy and woken up to the fact that the population is aging and seniors are a big part of the vote, particularly in key states like Florida, California and New York.”

Republican candidates no longer attack Medicare and Social Security; instead, they have joined the Democratic chorus and promise to save the crucial entitlements. There isn’t a candidate this election cycle who doesn’t swear to protect them, though in varying fashions.

In addition, Bradley’s health care proposal includes a long-term care provision to make seniors’ later years more secure. He and Gore are pushing for Medicare to cover prescription drugs. Bush and Forbes promise to kill inheritance taxes. Hatch and McCain have talked about managed care reform.

“There’s something every candidate has for seniors,” says Ross K. Baker, professor of political science at Rutgers University. “If a candidate were forced to trade off the votes of those 24 and younger for the 64 and older, they’d take the 64s every time.”

But just because the candidates are courting them more than ever before, the big question remains: Are older voters buying it? The answer, so far, is a respectful “not yet.”

They are paying attention to political promises--more so as the primary season progresses. Here in Iowa, gray heads often outnumber others at candidate appearances, particularly during school and work hours. But attention and acceptance are two very different things, especially for women and men who regularly note that they were not born yesterday--like Loretta Diehl, who describes herself as “living on borrowed time.”

“I’m afraid they’re all bringing it up just to get in [office],” Diehl says of the candidates and their promises. Having shaken hands this election season with Gore, Bush, Bradley and former candidate Elizabeth Hanford Dole, she’s heard many and wonders about them all. “Will they act? Will they do it?”

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Older, Wiser, More Involved

Senior voters, with their growing numbers and their higher propensity for voting, are a group to court in the 2000 election.

Change in Voting Rates

Increase in Life Expectancy

A Rising Force

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Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; professor Robert H. Binstock, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau.