GOP woos veterans, but Trump has rubbed some vets wrong way
RENO, Nevada — It was more than a routine get-outthe-vote knock on the door when Iraq War veteran and Nevada Republican Party staffer Jon Staab asked Kenneth Olofson, a Vietnam veteran, if he’ll be voting for Donald Trump. An instant bond was formed as the two swapped stories of service and those of relatives who fought in World War II.
“I don’t miss an election,” Olofson, 74 and a lifelong Republican, said. “Whenever I vote, I think of Normandy.”
A few blocks away, Daniel Mendoza, also an Iraq war veteran canvassing for the GOP, was promptly kicked off another elderly veteran’s property at the mere mention of Trump’s name.
Two years ago, the Republican National Committee hatched a plan to bolster turnout for veterans, who traditionally lean Republican. The party calculated that 6.5 million veterans either didn’t register to vote or didn’t cast a ballot in the 2012 presidential election. In the shadow of the Obama administration’s controversial management of the Veterans Administration, the RNC compiled lists of veteran voters and hired veterans for an unprecedented getout-the-vote effort.
Then Trump won the party’s presidential nomination, and his controversial rhetoric has rubbed some veterans the wrong way. The billionaire businessman has mocked Sen. John McCain for being captured during the Vietnam War, threatened to withdraw from NATO and feuded with a slain soldier’s family that criticized him during the Democratic National Convention.
On Tuesday, Trump released a list of former military leaders who support him. Clinton countered with a television ad featuring veterans silently watching some of Trump’s more controversial statements. “Our veterans deserve better,” the ad states.
There’s limited polling on where veterans stand in the current presidential election. They supported Mitt Romney by 20 points in 2012 and John McCain by 10 points in 2008. But Trump has had trouble winning the support of some of his party’s base, and veterans are no exception.
“The nail in the coffin for him was his NATO stuff,” said Colton Jordan, a 28-year-old former Navy SEAL and lifelong Republican, as he waited in a Las Vegas nightclub for a rally with his preferred candidate, Libertarian party nominee Gary Johnson.
Still, Republican operatives are confident that if they turn out veterans, they’ll turn out more votes for Trump.
“Being a veteran, your skin’s a lot thicker,” said Mendoza, 24, who noted that he’s both Hispanic and a veteran — two groups Trump has disparaged — but he still supports Republican nominee. “It conditions you to seeing that bigger world and seeing past what someone says off the cuff.”
The instant bond veterans form with each other often defuses tension inherent in political canvassing and opens doors that would otherwise be closed, said Bob Carey, a former Navy captain and the RNC’s veterans outreach director. But their political utility goes beyond that. “Veterans have a disproportionate ability to gain the trust of any voter,” Carey said. “The military is the last institution that has the trust and respect of the general public.”
Veterans vote at a higher rate than civilians, but younger veterans are less likely to vote than their peers. That’s no surprise to Staab. He was deployed to southern Iraq in 2008 where his unit received mail once a month and had to create a base virtually from scratch at an abandoned air field. He didn’t even remember to vote in the presidential election back home.