Courting women voters
2008-06-23 13:57
Washington - Republican John McCain is courting the loyalty of female voters, including disaffected supporters of Hillary Clinton, but faces a fierce counter-offensive from Democrat Barack Obama.
With fulsome praise for Clinton and a high profile on his campaign for female business executives, McCain is targeting the 54% of the electorate whose sway will prove vital to success in November's election.
But Obama is highlighting the economy, abortion and equal pay to say the Republican is on the "wrong side" of nearly every issue of concern to women, including Clinton backers still angry at her loss in the Democratic race.
"To be sure, anecdotally, there are older female Democrats who are hurt and who say today they won't vote for Obama. We have to see how that plays out," pollster John Zogby told AFP.
"But one has to assume that these are not one-dimensional voters," he said, highlighting two of McCain's campaign issues.
"Hammering pro-life (on abortion), or calling for offshore oil drilling, presumably that's not the kind of thing that's going to appeal to older female voters."
Softening his image
McCain, 71, has gone out of his way to laud Clinton's dogged run for the Democratic nomination, and has reached out to her supporters by holding "town hall" meetings with Democrats and independent voters.
Bidding to soften his image, the Arizona senator has also appeared on daytime television talk shows aimed at a female audience, including The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The View.
But the liberal group MoveOn.org and AFSCME union are now countering McCain's charm offensive with one of the hardest-hitting television advertisements of the general election campaign so far.
The ad, which started airing this week, features a young mother gazing adoringly at her baby boy, Alex, whose talents include "making my heart pound every time I look at him".
"So, John McCain, when you said you would stay in Iraq for 100 years, were you counting on Alex?" the actress says, her voice quavering. "Because if you were, you can't have him."
Women play a pivotal role
The group Emily's List, which works to elect female candidates favouring abortion rights, is urging its supporters to vote for Obama and is stressing the pivotal role that women will play in November.
Women form the majority of the electorate overall, and outnumber men in swing states and among undecided voters, according to Emily's List communications director Ramona Oliver.
"Anybody who wants to win an election needs to make their case and win women," she told National Public Radio.
When Clinton quit the bruising Democratic race in early June, up to one-third of the former first lady's female supporters told pollsters they would rather vote for McCain than Obama in November.
Opinion polls, however, suggest some of that anger may be dissipating.
Obama in the lead
A Zogby poll gave Obama a commanding lead over McCain among women of 51% to 36%. A Fox News poll last week suggested 17% of Clinton supporters would back McCain instead of Obama, down from 32% in April.
But Carly Fiorina, the chairperson of the Republican National Committee's "Victory 2008" operation, denies that Obama will have a lock on women voters now that Clinton is out of the race and economic fears are mounting.
"No one should be taking the women's vote for granted," Fiorina, the former chief executive of computer giant Hewlett-Packard, said on CNN.
"And the reality is that I have met many, many, women across this country who are very open-minded and eager to understand John McCain," she said.
Opportunity
"And I think that represents a huge opportunity for us. And I think we will narrow that gap considerably."
Fiorina has been addressing female voters at a series of McCain events in battleground states. One of his campaign co-chairs is Meg Whitman, who until March was boss of the internet auctioneer eBay.
However, McCain was embarrassed when he had to cancel a fundraiser at the home of Texas oilman Clayton Williams, after it emerged that Williams joked in 1990 that rape victims should "lie back and enjoy it."
But the Republican is convinced that both women and men will respond to his pitch that Obama, 46, is a "tax-and-spend" liberal whose relative inexperience makes him a risky choice for national security.
- AFP