Democratic Vice President Al Gore and Republican Texas Gov. George W. Bush on Tuesday brought the presidential race to Illinois, a swing state, as both candidates intensified their campaign for Midwestern voters who could hold the key to the November election.
Gore unleashed a series of television ads in 17 battleground states, including Illinois, an attempt to continue softening his image with warm biographical images from his service in Vietnam to his family life.
The vice president’s $5.5 million ad blitz matches a similar onslaught from Bush that began Monday, as both camps sought to maximize their momentum in the aftermath of their party conventions.
The Gore ad campaign began on a day when the vice president, a Vietnam veteran, spoke to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Milwaukee, seeking to rebut Bush’s assertion that the Clinton administration has let America’s armed forces slip into dangerous disrepair.
Wearing his VFW hat, from his own veterans’ post in Tennessee, Gore said he is “concerned when others try to run down America’s military for political advantage in an election year.”
Implicitly contrasting his own Vietnam duty with Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War era, Gore dismissed Republican criticism of the military as unwarranted and potentially dangerous.
“That’s not only wrong in fact, it’s the wrong message to send our allies and adversaries across the world,” he said.
Bush was in Peoria, a part of Illinois likely to produce the swing votes that both candidates are courting to win the state’s 22 electoral votes.
Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said during a campaign stop at Harrison Primary School, a public school in an impoverished part of Peoria’s South End: “We’re not ceding any ground to the Democrats. This is a state where the governor is going to work hard to get his message across.”
Bush, in a brief conversation with a Tribune reporter, also emphasized the importance of Illinois.
“If we win this state, I think I’m in pretty good shape” to win the election, Bush said. “I’ve got a shot at it. I’m in better shape than a lot of people anticipated.”
Before leaving Illinois, Bush addressed an enthusiastic crowd of several thousand supporters packed into a hangar at the Peoria airport.
In a bow to an important farm issue, Bush won cheers when he said he would support ethanol, a gasoline additive made from corn. Twice calling Illinois an “important” state, Bush drew his biggest applause with a well-practiced line about the projected budget surplus and his tax-cut plan, which Gore has attacked in recent days.
“I don’t think the surplus is the result of the hard work and initiative of government,” he said, standing close to a large sign that read “W. Plays in Peoria.” “It’s the result of the hard work and initiative of the American people. My opponent believes the surplus is the government’s money. I believe the surplus belongs to the people and we ought to give some of it back.”
In Chicago, Gore received a raucous welcome from the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners at McCormick Place. He later attended a fundraiser at a private home in Winnetka, raising $500,000, and spent the night in Chicago.
Gore’s new ads focus especially on the vice president as a person. They feature grainy black-and-white photos of Gore in Vietnam, with his wife, Tipper, and with his father. Later the photos are in color and show Gore talking to children, the elderly and others.
“America in turmoil,” the announcer begins. “Al Gore graduates college. His father, a U.S. senator, opposes the Vietnam War. Al Gore has his doubts, but enlists in the Army.”
After summarizing Gore’s life and interspersing the array of populist issues the vice president has been pushing, the announcer concludes: “Al Gore. Married 30 years. Father of four. Fighting for us.”
The Bush campaign criticized Gore’s new television ad, saying the spot exaggerates the role Gore played in welfare reform. Bush aides also asserted that the Democratic nominee voted for the Persian Gulf war resolution as a U.S. senator “only after shopping his vote around in exchange for a prime-time speaking spot,” according to Bush campaign spokesman Ari Fleischer.
George Edwards, director of the Center for Presidential Studies at Texas A&M University, said the timing for the ads is not accidental.
“There is a long time when people are not paying attention, but right after the conventions they are,” Edwards said. “There was a lot of emphasis by both Bush and Gore on defining themselves at the conventions, and both of them want to follow up on that.”
The window for candidates to make an impact is narrow, Edwards said. “This is a critical juncture,” he said. “Polls taken in early September generally predict the outcome.”
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The polls have been volatile during and just after the conventions, but recent polls show Gore pulling even with Bush after trailing for months. Gore’s ad is airing in many of the states considered up for grabs, including Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
The Gore and Bush campaigns are focusing heavily on the Midwest, both in campaigning and advertising. The region’s residents are likely to see a lot more of Bush and Gore, in person and on television, over the next two months.
“These states are historically battlegrounds states that determined the outcome of elections,” said Gore spokesman Chris Lehane. “People ask why we’re running ads in states that we won in ’96. Well, we won in ’96 because we won those states. It’s not rocket science.”
In his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Gore responded to comments Bush made to the same group Monday. Bush had portrayed the military as razor-sharp under his father’s presidency but fading dangerously in the Clinton years.
“The current administration inherited a military ready for the dangers and challenges facing our nation,” Bush told the VFW. “The next president will inherit a military in decline. It’s still without equal in the world, but it is not without serious problems that must be addressed immediately.”
Bush reeled off a series of alleged morale-killers, such as poor pay and equipment shortages. Gore suggested Bush’s criticism of the military was insulting to those who serve in it.
“If anyone doubts our strength, let them talk to our pilots patrolling the skies over Iraq,” Gore said. “Let them meet the sailors who have kept the peace in the Taiwan Strait. … Our military is the strongest and the best in the entire world.”
The Gore campaign also noted that the 2001 defense budget contains a $20 billion increase and that military personnel received a 4.8 percent raise last year.
The dueling Gore-Bush speeches reflect their ongoing skirmish over defense policy, a subject that shows new twists as the country’s leadership continues to pass from the World War II generation to the Vietnam generation.
Democrats have traditionally had a harder time convincing voters they are strong supporters of the military. President Clinton in particular prompted distrust by the military, in part because he avoided service in Vietnam. Gore’s and Bush’s personal histories are also coming into play, compellingly though not always explicitly.
The Gore campaign, for example, has been happy to remind voters that Gore served in Vietnam while Bush did not. After volunteering, Gore was assigned to be an Army reporter, where he covered troops in combat. He is a member of VFW Post 5021 in his hometown of Carthage, Tenn.
“I don’t pretend that my own military experience matches in any way what others here have been through,” Gore told the veterans. “I didn’t do the most or run the gravest danger. But I was proud to wear my country’s uniform.”
Bush, who flew fighter planes over Texas in the state’s Air National Guard during the war, has sought to some degree to bask in the reflected glow of his father, President George Bush, a World War II Navy fighter pilot.
At McCormick Place, Gore entered the hall accompanied by Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, exchanging high-fives with union members who greeted him with enthusiastic ovations and chants of “Gore! Gore!” Standing between signs reading “Organize or Die!” Gore told the roughly 5,000 carpenters, “I will be pro-union and pro-collective bargaining and pro-worker, because that is the right thing for our country.”
In Peoria, Bush tried to draw attention to a subject important to his own campaign: education, and specifically, the importance of teaching children to read by 3rd grade.
The Texas governor has proposed spending $5 billion over five years on a “Reading First” program to improve the reading ability of young children, especially in low-income areas.
The Harrison school sits in the midst of the Harrison Homes, Peoria’s largest public-housing project. But reading scores at the school are well above similar schools in Peoria, according to Peoria school Supt. John Garrett.
To teach reading, the school relies on a phonics system that research has shown helps children learn to read faster, tests children frequently to zero in on children with reading difficulties, and relies on a group of volunteers from across the city to tutor pupils.
Bush hailed Mary Lou Russell, who has tutored at the school since the mid-1990s, as “one of the soldiers in the armies of compassion,” a favorite phrase he uses to invoke the power of local efforts to address problems, as opposed to federal programs.
Later in the day, Bush visited an elementary school in another swing area–the suburbs of St. Louis. Missouri, like Illinois, backed Clinton in the last two elections, but Bush’s father won both states in 1988.
The Wild Horse elementary school in Chesterfield was the 95th school that the Texas governor has visited in his presidential run, aides said. He plans to visit 100 schools by Election Day.
In the meantime, Bush acknowledged that he has had difficulty convincing voters that the nation can afford his $1.3 trillion tax cut after shoring up Social Security.
“I have got to do a better job of making it clear” that expected budget surpluses in the next 10 years will allow for tax cuts, Bush told reporters.
But after the rally in Peoria, Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), who introduced Bush, expressed doubts about the tax-cut plan.
“I think there’s some appetite for it, but I think he should also be talking about, `I want to be able to pay down debt too.’ I think that is problematic for people,” LaHood said.
As they looked ahead to the fall push after Labor Day, the Bush and Gore campaigns continued their mutual sniping over presidential debates. On Tuesday Gore named campaign chairman William Daley to negotiate with the Bush camp on his behalf.