Sen. John Kerry dove into South Florida's condo thickets Monday, and President Bush will campaign today at the Villages, Central Florida's retirement megalopolis.
Civic-minded older voters remain the prized plum of American politics. But this time around, it's not same-old, same-old. New dynamics are at play.
-- Democrats always could count on scoring points with the bedrock issues of Social Security and Medicare. This year, Bush touts a Medicare drug benefit he pushed through Congress.
-- "Senior" issues may take a back seat to war and terrorism. At least one national poll indicates that Iraq worries older voters more than their health or pocketbooks.
-- Early voting and unprecedented get-out-the-vote campaigns may diminish the usual electoral clout of older voters. They always hit the polls in droves - their numbers can't get much higher. Big turnouts usually mean that younger groups are showing up.
That could help the Republicans, who are mining college campuses and conservative churches for new voters. Or it could help the Democrats, who until recently were renowned for getting out the vote, and now have two weeks extra to do that.
Either way, generational politics promises to break new ground.
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Herbert Coleman wears a medal from his days as a Brooklyn cop. Now retired in Sun City Center, the 76-year-old former Marine and self-described independent is glad to expound on why he wants to give the president four more years.
"He protected us for three years. We didn't have another attack on America. I trust him. Kerry, I didn't like the way he denigrated our Vietnam vets. I heard enough of that with the hippie generation."
Coleman's concerns about terrorism and war align him squarely with his generation. In Washington Post polls this month, roughly 30 percent of likely voters older than 60 considered Iraq the most important issue affecting their vote. Another 20 to 25 percent listed terrorism. Health care hovered around 15 percent.
"This generation is heavily veteran, and that does make a difference," said John Rother, policy director for the AARP. "But it doesn't clearly tell you which way it makes a difference, whether for Kerry or Bush."
Kerry, whose support sagged among all age groups during his Swift Boat malaise this summer, took a particularly hard hit from older voters.
In a March St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald poll, voters 65 and older preferred Kerry more than any other age group did. By mid August, in a complete turnaround, they preferred Bush more than any other age group.
Robert Schroth, whose company conducted the polls, cautioned that recent private polls indicate that Kerry has since pulled even among older Floridians.
"A lot of people over 65 fought in wars," Schroth said. "To the extent Kerry lost credibility on his service record, he paid a high price politically among those voters."
But Iraq and terrorism are not the knockout punch Republican strategists would like. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll taken after the first presidential debate found that 60 percent of voters 65 and older called the Iraq war a mistake, compared with 50 percent of other age groups.
"We waited until we were bombed at Pearl Harbor before we got in," said Howard Jensen, an 83-year-old resident of Palms of Largo and World War II veteran.
"Bush has gotten us into a war we shouldn't have been in. If we were over in Afghanistan going after bin Laden, who was our enemy, that would be one thing. This is terrible that we should invade a country for no reason whatsoever."
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Four years ago, Al Gore promised voters: Put me in the White House and I'll get you a prescription drug benefit. His opponent, then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, said people could get drugs through private Medicare HMOs, because they were more efficient.
Today, Medicare HMOs are costing the government a bundle and Bush is running for re-election on Gore's old proposal.
Last December, Congress brought prescription drug coverage to 45-million Americans on Medicare. It's expected to cost $500-billion over 10 years. But it's no panacea. Out-of-pocket expenses remain and coverage stops when bills reach a certain level.
Still, Bush got it done, with the AARP at his side. The senior lobby, which rarely aligns with Republicans on health issues, called the drug bill flawed but better than nothing.
"I was deeply concerned about seniors having to choose between prescription drugs and food," Bush said in last week's presidential debate. "And so I led."
Bush may or may not reap the political credit. A Harvard University/Kaiser Family Foundation study last summer showed that almost twice as many Medicare beneficiaries disliked the new drug benefit as liked it.
Two aspects of the drug bill were particularly unpopular: It didn't allow immediate importation of inexpensive drugs from Canada, and it prohibited the government from using Medicare's mammoth clout to negotiate discounts from manufacturers.
That's where Kerry is pouncing.
"In the Senate we passed the right of Americans to import drugs from Canada. But the President and his friends took it out in the House," Kerry said in the last debate. "We also wanted Medicare to be able to negotiate bulk purchasing. The VA does that. The VA provides lower-cost drugs to our veterans. We could have done that in Medicare."
Four years ago, Social Security was a central campaign issue. Gore said record budget surpluses could shore up the system's long-term weaknesses. Bush promised to hand over a part of Social Security's income so younger people could invest privately for their retirement.
This year, the issue is just starting to heat up.
Bush has not detailed how he would fund private accounts without siphoning dollars from the beleaguered Social Security trust fund. He insists he won't cut benefits to today's retirees or near retirees. Kerry charges that such cuts would be the inevitable result.
Accusing Republicans of threatening Social Security has served Democrats well in past campaigns. Last week at Sun City Center, the president's mother warned GOP retirees not to be taken in.
"You are going to hear lots of outrageous things about our son," said Barbara Bush. "Do you think a president's parents would let their son wreck Social Security and Medicare? Be careful, please."
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Turnout among older voters usually runs 3 to 10 percent higher than among other age groups, said Susan MacManus, who teaches generational politics at the University of South Florida. With both camps furiously rallying their troops, that age gap should diminish.
"Democrats are putting a lot of stock in younger voters. They feel it is the biggest untapped pool out there," said MacManus."We know historically that wars disturb young people. Wars and jobs get young people's attention in a hurry."
Pinellas Democratic chairman Tom Steck agreed. "A lot of folk are energized about this campaign who would not normally be so active. It's not so much that the elderly are dropping back, but the vote of lots of age groups will increase."
Republicans aren't ceding any ground . Vote-by-mail campaigns, perfected by Republicans when it was called absentee balloting, can be appealing to less mobile older voters. In the Tampa Bay area, Republicans lead Democrats 6 to 5 in requests for mail ballots.
"We chase those ballots," said April Schiff a Tampa consultant who works on Republican causes. "We know who has turned them in and who hasn't, and we have phone-banked them to get them in."
Pinellas County's mail-in ballot has put Kerry supporter Howard Jensen on edge. It listed three County Commission races and instructed him to vote for one candidate.
"I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to pick one candidate in each race or just one altogether," said Jensen, who remembers 2000's confusing butterfly ballot. "I don't want to invalidate the whole thing by voting for too many in one place.
"I guess the easiest way is not to vote for any of them."
Howard Troxler:
