Clark, Kerry Competing Over Fellow Veterans

War hero, former senator and triple combat amputee Max Cleland sat on the small stage Friday 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 wait. Kerry is not the only man who’s been there, done that and is angling for the Democratic presidential nomination here in New Hampshire. Earlier in the week in Rochester, the head of a Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter explained why a different veteran deserved the veteran vote.

“Wesley Clark has led an army,” Brian Hardy told the 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, in a fight for the support of a coveted bloc of voters. Clark sat out the Iowa caucuses, ceding the Hawkeye State’s military might to Kerry; but he used that time to gain advantage among their military counterparts here.

There are 140,000 former soldiers, sailors and Marines in New Hampshire -- though only registered Democrats and independents can cast ballots on Tuesday -- and 26 million nationwide. The names of nearly 30,000 of those Granite State veterans who can vote are in the Kerry campaign database; Clark has identified about 60,000 of the same stripe.

Many veterans here say they are delighted to have two of their own in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Veterans as a group, however, are far from lock step when it comes to political concerns.

They have only historically marched in unison in following the Republican Party. But this season, some Democrats believe, may be theirs to attract veterans to their side of the presidential ticket.

“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 that 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, put forth a budget proposal that called for $28 billion in cuts to veterans programs over 10 years.

Both candidates regularly exploit these and other Bush actions.

Kerry 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.”

“I don’t think it’s patriotic to dress up in a flight suit and prance around on the deck of an aircraft carrier,” Clark tells audiences, referring to Bush’s appearance on the Abraham Lincoln last spring, when he declared major combat over in Iraq. The line frequently gets the biggest cheer of Clark’s speech.

Still, most observers believe that Bush will be the man to beat for the veteran vote, regardless of which Democrat he goes up against. According to a recent poll of career military personnel by the Military Times, 57% of respondents said they voted Republican, 13% Democrat, and 18% independent. The rest declined to answer.

To capture 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, says Duke University political scientist Christopher Gelpi, is that polls show voters are more concerned with domestic issues than with the war in Iraq, and concerns over deployments, pay and veteran benefits are niche issues that don’t appeal much to nonveteran voters.

Many veterans say that they are studying all the candidates like never before and that the old maxim is true: Veterans don’t cast their vote for anyone simply because he once wore a uniform.

“Just because they’re veterans doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing,” Steven Fowle, who served in Vietnam, said at a Clark speech to veterans earlier in the week in Plymouth, N.H. “I’m looking for the best candidate, not the best vet.”

Kerry press secretary David Wade contended, however, that in Iowa on Monday, “we proved that the conventional wisdom was wrong. We learned that veterans will turn out to vote for their fellow veteran.”

Kerry’s campaign credits much of its success in Iowa to the network of veterans who worked phone banks and tapped other voters to turn out at the caucuses. In New Hampshire, the campaign has compiled a database of nearly 30,000 veterans across the political spectrum. It plans to have its veteran volunteers call nearly 14,000 of them by Tuesday.

Supporters of both Kerry and Clark have said they respect the opposing candidate; some even go so far as to float the idea of a veteran-veteran ticket -- Kerry-Clark or Clark-Kerry.

Both men 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 has had 35 years of public service and a seat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and he was co-founder of the Vietnam Veterans of America.

Each man has complimented the other for being a distinguished public servant. Each also works hard to convince 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. His campaign points out that the last legislator elected president was John F. Kennedy, who was a senator from Massachusetts when he won the White House in 1960. All other modern presidents have been generals, governors or vice presidents.

“John Kerry became a legislator, and a distinguished one, but that experience is different than leading large numbers of people,” said Clark’s communications director, Matt Bennett.

Clark’s “commands got larger and larger until he had the extraordinary title of supreme allied commander [of NATO forces]. That’s sort of the ultimate executive title. That executive experience is very different than being one of 100” senators, Bennett said.

Wade, however, notes that Kerry has been an advocate for veterans since returning from Vietnam War. He said veterans came out for Kerry in tough Senate races in the past and would come out to vote for him again in his run for the White House.

“Kerry has a 35-year record of fighting for veterans on veterans’ health care, veterans’ benefits, pensions,” Wade said. “I think that’s important above and beyond the bond of having worn a uniform.”

Clark and Kerry both have growing teams of veterans who volunteer for their campaigns here, Clark more than 500, Kerry some 2,000, according to their campaigns. Both have nascent veteran operations in many of the seven states holding primaries on Feb. 3, and Clark has veteran volunteers in at least two others.

While Kerry was slugging it out in Iowa, Clark was free not only to stump in New Hampshire but also to raise money that has enabled his campaign to far surpass Kerry in terms of organizing in fast-approaching states.

Kerry’s surprise trouncing of Howard Dean in Iowa, however, has catapulted him to the top of the pack here -- with Clark and Dean tied for second in opinion polls. It also has helped him ramp up fundraising efforts that a week ago were languishing.

Veterans make up 15% of New Hampshire’s population. States holding primaries in early February also boast sizable percentages of veterans: South Carolina with 14%, and Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico, Washington state and Virginia each with 15%.

Voting trends among veterans differ from state to state, however, and Clark seems better positioned in some, Kerry in others. New Hampshire, for example, has a higher percentage of older veterans and noncareer veterans than Virginia, where many former high-ranking officers live.

Feaver, one of the political scientists at Duke, predicted that Clark, with his four stars, would do better among older and noncareer veterans of New Hampshire, and that Kerry could lose veteran votes in the mostly rural state because of his patrician, Boston Brahmin image.

On the other hand, after 20 years as senator, Kerry could play well among the military elite of Virginia. That state holds its primary Feb. 10. Clark, who was ushered out of his job commanding North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces and has his share of high-level military detractors, including former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton, could struggle, Feaver said.

Thus far, both candidates have aimed most of their firepower at Bush, deriding his policies, mocking his experience level and contrasting their decades in foreign policy. “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 a few miles away.

The only military-related spat so far between the vying vets broke out recently, 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 going to teach [Clark] in South Carolina: There are more lieutenants than there are generals,” World War II veteran Sen. Ernest F. Hollings called out from the stage 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.”