President Obama is wooing a group of voters who would traditionally favor his would-be Republican opponent, Mitt Romney: veterans and military families the president hopes will be drawn to him because of his foreign policy successes and efforts to end two wars.
The Obama campaign is kicking off “Veterans and Military Families for Obama” Thursday in Norfolk, which has one of the largest concentrations of military personnel not only in Virginia but the country.
For Democrats, courting of traditionally conservative military voters its typically a long shot at best. Those voters often lean Republican because they see that party as more supportive of the military in general. But Obama could change that dynamic, analysts said.
“The president has support in the military — he always has,” said Jon Soltz, an Iraq War veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org, a political advocacy group. “Republicans, on the other hand, have never had as much support as they have tried to sell.”
Obama lost the veterans’ vote in 2008 to decorated war hero Sen. John McCain, though an Obama campaign official noted that the Democrat did win among veterans under the age of 60. Of 20 million-plus veterans in the U.S., about 16 million voted in the 2008 presidential campaign, making up nearly 12 percent of the total vote that year.
The Obama campaign believes that veterans and their families could be the key to winning some military-dependent battleground states, including Virginia, North Carolina and Colorado, all of them considered critical to Obama’s success in November.
Obama campaign aides said more military voters have shifted to support the president since 2008, when Obama, then the junior U.S. Senator from Chicago, took heat for his lack of foreign policy experience.
Over the last three years, Obama has overseen the winding down of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He ordered the successful mission that killed al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden and joined NATO forces in helping oust Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. At home, his administration implemented a half-dozen programs to help veterans and their families find work and pay for housing.
Obama implemented the Post-9/11 GI Bill to help veterans pay for school and housing. He cut taxes for businesses that hire unemployed veterans and established new protections for veterans victimized by the deceptive practices of for-profit colleges.
First lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, have been involved in some of the White House’s most aggressive outreach programs for military families, touring the country together to promote “Joining Forces,” an initiative intended to help families cope when a loved one is deployed overseas.
Republican Mitt Romney, who will face Obama in the fall, accused the president of pandering to the military for political gain.
“Every four years, the president becomes a friend of the veterans and a friend of the military,” Romney told a Virginia crowd recently. “This is the time for people in the military and people who care about American strength to stand up and vote for a change in Washington that removes this president and puts someone in that keeps America strong — and I will.”
