GREENVILLE, S.C. -- Richard Herman is a typical soldier in the battle to elect Sen. John McCain. At a recent event, the 80-year-old South Carolinian came bearing the trademarks of McCain's veterans army: one hearing aid, one large-print book, one fading girlie tattoo his wife still calls a big mistake.
And one vow that a vote for McCain is his patriotic duty.
The McCain campaign has dubbed its veterans operation "One Last Mission" -- an electoral sortie directed at aging voters who have lived some of the same searing war history that now defines this candidate.
The campaign is betting that this time, after years of divided loyalties, former fighters will unify at the polls. The McCain team is counting on these votes, the last for some veterans, to swing tomorrow's South Carolina primary.
But the vote is elusive. These soldiers do not always go to the polls in large numbers, and they seldom vote as a bloc. They went Democratic in the past two presidential elections. Adding to the challenge, McCain's main Republican rival, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas, is aggressively courting them here, too.
But McCain can capitalize on a personal history that Bush lacks: 5 1/2 nightmarish years in captivity in a North Vietnamese prison camp. McCain's book, "Faith of My Fathers," a memoir about his family's three generations of Navy fighters, has become an emblem of his war experience and the loyalty it engenders among some voters. At a rally in Greenville yesterday, as music pumped over loudspeakers, three women stood in the front row shaking copies of the book like pom-poms.
"When he was in that prison, he stood by his friends," said Herman, a Marine in World War II who waited for more than two hours at a Greenville book signing Wednesday. "He never gave up. That's the kind of man he is."
Critical support
Several men -- two World War II fighters and one Vietnam veteran -- sobbed while standing before McCain at the book signing. Another brought a photograph of himself serving with McCain's grandfather, a four-star admiral. Others simply approached McCain respectfully, holding out their copy of the book and promising their support.
It is needed.
"There is no scenario in which John McCain can win South Carolina without the veterans," conceded McCain's political director, John Weaver, who marvels at the candidate's bond with this group.
"They don't even [need] to talk to him. They look at him. They pat his arm. I don't understand the power of it. But it's there."
