Kerry campaigns to military voters

Some veterans support Kerry because of the shared experience.
XENIA, Ohio (AP) -- A 30-year Air Force veteran who served in the Persian Gulf War and whose son fought in Iraq, Bob Hanafin is no stranger to the stresses of combat.
Hanafin said one reason he plans to vote for Sen. John Kerry over President Bush is Kerry's combat experience.
"He's been there, done that," said Hanafin, of the Dayton suburb of Beavercreek. "He's more sensitive. If you've been in combat yourself, then you're more sensitive to what the troops have been through. I know."
Hanafin was among the veterans who turned out Saturday to hear Kerry speak at a town hall meeting at Xenia High School in this southeast Ohio city.
Ron Casey, a Marine Corps veteran, stood along the road leading to the school with about 20 other Bush supporters. Casey said Kerry would not be as strong in fighting terrorists in Iraq, making it more likely that the terrorists would bring their fight to the United States.
"He knows there is a job to be done and he's willing to ask people who signed that contract to do their duty" Casey, 28, of Xenia, said of Bush. "It's not time to renege on that duty."
Ties to Vietnam
Ormondo Henderson, a Vietnam veteran, said he supports Kerry because he had the guts to criticize America's involvement in the Vietnam War and would be more likely to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq.
"We're wrong in this case," said Henderson, 65, of Wilberforce. "You cannot win a war of occupation. We will not democratize that place."
As Kerry's caravan pulled up to the high school, Bush supporters lining the road waved their signs and chanted, "Four more years."
Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, spoke in a city that sits in the shadow of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, which has 22,000 military and civilian workers. Kerry's campaign handed out about 2,500 tickets to the town hall meeting, held in the school's gymnasium.
Jobs in Ohio
Kerry vowed to tackle the problem of the decline of manufacturing jobs, a national trend hitting Ohio particularly hard.
"We're losing good jobs," Kerry said. "Consumer confidence in America is plunging downwards as people have more and more doubts about the economy. Doubts are one of the things a president is elected to deal with."
He later was to board a bus and make his way east through rural, mostly Republican counties, before ending the trip with a rally at a farm in Pike County.
"Kerry is trying to make some inroads with the active military and their families," said Larry Sabato, political scientist at the University of Virginia. "He needs to do that because Bush is doing very well with that group."
The stop comes on the heels of a national survey of people in the military and their families who said they would trust Bush more than Kerry as commander in chief by nearly a 3-to-1 margin.
Bush, who served in the Texas Air National Guard, was more trusted by 69 percent, while 24 percent said they had more trust in the Democratic presidential nominee, according to the National Annenberg Election Survey released Friday.
Military vote
However, Nancy Martorano, assistant professor of political science at the University of Dayton, said some voters with military connections aren't happy with the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq.
"The military vote is pretty solid for Bush. But there are votes out there for Kerry," Martorano said. "And there are a whole host of Vietnam veterans who support John Kerry because they have that shared experience."
Martorano said that Republicans historically win support from the military community because they tend to spend more on defense than Democrats.
Robert Adams, political analyst at Wright State University, doubts that Kerry will make many inroads into the military vote.
"He's not going to convert any Wright-Patterson Air Force Base colonel," Adams said. "He might convert some noncommissioned officers, but not any brass."
Ohio, which went for Bush in 2000, is being fiercely contested by the two candidates, with 20 electoral votes at stake. Xenia is the county seat of Greene County, where Bush defeated Democrat Al Gore by 37,900 votes to 25,000 in the 2000 election.