Deserting the GOP

At a veterans' watering hole, anger over Iraq runs deep and the message is clear: Republican incumbents can no longer count on the support of military voters.

By Michael Scherer

Read more: Military, Politics, House, News, Virginia, Michael Scherer, Iraq War, 2006 Elections

Photo: AP/Gary C. Knapp

Vice President Dick Cheney, right, and Rep. Thelma Drake at a February 2006 reelection campaign dinner in Norfolk, Va.

Oct. 17, 2006 | VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. -- When a NASCAR race is on, the patrons at VFW Post 392 don't hesitate to flip from the American League baseball playoffs to watch. This is a watering hole for military men and the women who keep them honest, a place where people keep name tags on their own liquor bottles behind the bar and still talk about their dislike for Bill Clinton. A full copy of the U.S. Constitution hangs on one wall, across from a bumper sticker that reads "I Love Jet Noise." In the men's bathroom, there is a "Hanoi Jane Urinal Target" in each of the commodes, along with a bull's-eye picture of Jane Fonda in all her 1960s antiwar glory.

But you might be surprised by the political views of the folks inside. Hugh McCabe, a retired Navy lieutenant commander who is sipping a glass of white wine with his niece, son and daughter-in-law on a Sunday night, has had just about all he can take from Washington. "Anybody who is an incumbent, vote 'em out. That's my feeling," says McCabe, who wears a red plastic bracelet at the members-only bar here at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post to show his support for the troops. "We need a third party in government called common sense."

Though he doesn't declare a party affiliation, McCabe says he voted for President Bush in 2004. He worked on the 2000 presidential primary campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., because they had both served together in Vietnam on the U.S.S. Forrestal, an aircraft carrier once docked in nearby Norfolk. Ask him about the biggest issue in the upcoming election, and he'll say he doesn't care much what Rep. Mark Foley of Florida did or didn't do over e-mail with teenage pages. But he fears his grandchildren are growing up in a more dangerous world, and he isn't happy at all with the Iraq war. "We shouldn't be there," he says.

He is, in so many words, the Republican congressional leadership's worst fears come true. And if public opinion polls are to be believed, he is not alone here in Virginia's 2nd Congressional District, where the incumbent, Republican Thelma Drake, is fighting hard to retain her seat. The district, which includes parts of Norfolk, Hampton and all of Virginia Beach, has the highest concentration of active-duty military in the country. One in five voting-age residents is a military veteran. With a handful of major naval bases and the constant roar of fighter jets overhead, there is rarely a public event here that isn't preceded by a high school ROTC honor guard to present the colors of the American flag.

After the 2000 census, the state Republican leadership redrew this already conservative district in the hopes of making it a Republican stronghold. Drake took office in 2004 with a solid 55 percent of the vote, on the coattails of President Bush, who won 58 percent. "Part of what we ran on was that she wanted to help in the president's fight in the war on terrorism and help advance his economic policies," says Jeff Palmore, Drake's 2004 campaign manager. "We tried to campaign based on those issues."

But most polls now show Drake with under 50 percent support from local voters, in a statistical dead heat with her Democratic opponent, Phil Kellam, a local commissioner of revenue from a regionally prominent political family. While a solid share of military voters are still likely to support Drake, there are signs that Navy families here are not immune to national concerns about Bush's wartime leadership. "I think we are seeing the same thing here that we are seeing nationally," admits state delegate Leo Wardrup, a Republican who is Drake's local political mentor. "There is disaffection in terms of the war effort."

Clearly, disaffection is rattling traditional military support for the Grand Old Party. In addition to Virginia Beach, USA Today recently reported that Republicans are fighting hard to hold on to seats in Colorado Springs, Colo., home of the Air Force Academy, and Tucson, Ariz., a major retirement community for military veterans. Unlike the Vietnam War, which largely united the professional military, the conflict in Iraq has caused a split within the leadership and the rank and file.

"I was around during Vietnam and I never remember generals coming out and questioning the leadership of the military back then," says Joel Rubin, a longtime political observer in Virginia Beach, who hosts a Sunday morning political show on WVEC-TV. "The anger, I think, is pretty deep, but we won't know for sure until Nov. 7."

For her part, Drake has been doing what she can to change the topic from the war in Iraq. On the campaign trail, she has called illegal immigration the biggest issue in the race, even though migrant labor is minimal here, and less than 5 percent of the district's population identifies as Hispanic. On Saturday, after appearing in a small-town parade in the Phoebus neighborhood of Hampton, Va., Drake argued that Democratic millionaires and their front groups, who started running attack ads against her in the spring, are the big factor in making the race more fierce than 2004. "The big difference is the out-of-state groups that have come in, the MoveOn.org people, the Majority Action Committee, which again is George Soros and his friends," she said. "We did not have these out-of-state groups that were so determined to be negative, to distort the facts and to outright lie about what has taken place."

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