The Adults: 
versus
The Flakes: 
Posted on 10/31/2004 9:32:45 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Susan Barba is a Morris County Republican who voted for every GOP presidential candidate since Richard Nixon in 1968.
Not this year.
"I just feel totally unsafe with Bush in the White House," she said. "He's created more terrorism."
Madeline Bradley, a registered Democrat, voted for Al Gore in the last election. She thinks John Kerry is weak on terrorism, so she's voting for President Bush.
"Everything changed on Sept. 11," the Fair Lawn resident said. "Even if I disagree with President Bush on some issues, none of these things are going to matter if we all get blown up."
Terrorism has provoked sharp emotions this election year, particularly among women who consistently believe domestic security is the most vital challenge confronting the nation, according to voter surveys. In some cases, they are jettisoning their party loyalties or concerns over other social and policy issues that they normal examine before voting.
In response, strategists for the Bush and Kerry campaigns have carefully tailored their messages to resonate with women and have dispatched the candidates' wives, daughters and sisters to New Jersey to rally voters.
It's an unprecedented strategy. And now, with 48 hours remaining before the polls open, both campaigns are focusing with greater intensity on a political prize they have both been fighting for - women voters who have yet to decide who they support.
Most undecided voters have historically been women, and because the presidential race is so tight their votes could be pivotal in securing a victory, say political scientists and strategists from both campaigns.
"They are the key to winning, no doubt - more so in New Jersey," said one Republican operative familiar with Bush campaign strategy. "That's why both parties are trying to appeal to them."
A Democratic strategist agreed, pointing out that women "don't tend to necessarily vote along party lines."
"In this particular race, women have been a coveted group" this strategist said, with undecided women voters representing "a specific, surgical segment."
Both campaigns have focused on undecided women with unusual energy, and most recent political rallies in the Garden State have focused on the issues of terrorism and homeland security. In a state scarred by the loss of more than 700 residents in the Sept. 11 attacks, terrorism has consistently ranked among the top concerns of New Jersey women in polls.
"New Jersey may be closer than expected because of the war on terror and the reverberations which continue after Sept. 11, 2001," said Larry J. Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "If there are any states where residents are particularly focused on terror, it's the two that have suffered the most - New York and New Jersey."
A variety of polls have suggested that women in New Jersey favor Kerry, but think Bush would do a better job on terrorism and homeland security.
"Traditionally the issues that are used to appeal to them are health care, abortion, education - and these have kind of taken a back-burner to the security issues," said the GOP strategist.
In New Jersey, both campaigns have sent women to New Jersey to appeal to women voters.
Kerry's running mate, John Edwards, was introduced by five women who lost family members in the World Trade Center attacks. First lady Laura Bush has visited twice; Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, spoke here about terrorism, and Kerry's sister, Peggy, was in Paterson last week with a Sept. 11 widow.
On Friday, the GOP began airing a radio spot that features a New Jersey woman whose son, a police officer, died on Sept. 11. Men have pushed this message, too: Both Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush focused on terrorism on their recent visits to the Garden State.
Both campaigns have literature aimed at women. Some wear campaign apparel, such as with pink baseball caps with the slogan "W Stands For Women" embroidered in teal, or cotton T-shirts "made in the USA, union printed," sporting the phrase, "It's Up to the Women; Vote Kerry."
Then there are grass-roots efforts.
Ines Garcia-Keim carried the Democrats' message to five New Jersey women at a shelter for battered women where she volunteers and helped them register. On Tuesday, she plans to drive them to the polls.
Terrorism ranks high on her list, too. An airline employee who was working at Newark Airport on Sept. 11 when a jet there was hijacked, Garcia-Keim is also raising young children in Hoboken.
"Because of where we live, because of the business that I'm in, it's a very personal issue," she said.
Other Democrats in a group called "New Jersey Women for Kerry-Edwards" launched a campaign to write 3,000 undecided women voters in the battleground state of Wisconsin and urge their support for Kerry.
"The whole point was to draw in women who were undecided or not already a part of the system," said Blair MacInnes, who chairs the group and lives in Morris County.
Party Web sites have also been used to recruit women voters and volunteers. In New Jersey, more than 1,000 have signed up to be e-mail members of the GOP's "W Stands for Women," while others have been walking door to door.
Linda Bergin of Upper Montclair has spent most of her Thursday nights typing away at her computer keyboard, conversing with others around the nation who are logged into the Yahoo chat room for a group called "Security Moms for Bush."
"We'll just converse about different events that are coming up, a lot of issues are actually discussed," Bergin said. "It becomes kind of a coffee klatsch."
Bergin is the New Jersey state captain of "Security Moms for Bush," and says there is little question that terrorism is the most important issue of this presidential election and that Bush is just the man to fight it.
"I have children," Bergin said. "I don't want them going to school or being in cafes like in Israel and have them blown up. I want my children to have the same free America that I had."
Not everyone agrees with her political decisions.
A fellow New Jerseyan, Patti Scialfa, recently spoke about the terrorism issue when performing at an Oct. 13 concert in Continental Arena, which featured prominent rock musicians raising money to defeat Bush. Her husband, Bruce Springsteen, was among the performers.
"As the mother of three children myself, I would like to believe that all women vote from conviction and courage and not from fear," Scialfa, who lives in Monmouth County, told the sold-out crowd. "To cast a vote from fear is beneath us as women and beneath us as Americans."
But McInnes, the chairperson of New Jersey Women for Kerry-Edwards, said she believes many Democratic women are legitimately worried about terrorism. One recent incident that sent shivers through many women across the state, she said, was the attack on a Russian school by Chechen insurgents in the Caucasus in which 360 died, many of them children.
"I think that had a very profound effect, I think this is embedded very deeply in the hearts and minds and souls of women in New Jersey," she said.
With the issues of terrorism and Iraq both provoking deep emotions this year, strategists hope not only to attract undecided women but think some die-hard partisans will cross party lines.
Barba, the longtime Republican who lives in Morris County, said that in the last presidential election she donated $2,000 to George W. Bush and voted for the Texas governor. But she is so incensed now by Bush's policies that this time around she plans to vote for Kerry.
"My greatest concern is what he did in Iraq - I was totally against the invasion - that was the beginning of my disappointment with him," Barba said. "He's destroyed our alliances in Europe. I don't see any foreign policy at all."
The opposite is true for Bradley, the Bergen Democrat, who says she will vote for Bush and supported his military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. She admitted she "pushed to the side" some of her views on positions such as abortion that had attracted her originally to the Democratic Party.
"Even if I disagree with President Bush on some issues," Bradley said, "the issue of security is by far the most important."
But Susan Carroll, a Rutgers political scientist who has studied voters' behavior, is skeptical that terrorism will be the pivotal issue that will sway undecided voters. These voters, she said, traditionally support challengers over incumbents and are motivated by pocketbook issues such as jobs and personal finance.
They "tend to be people who don't follow politics closely,'' Carroll said. "In the case of women, it tends to be multi-tasking - people who have a lot going on. Many of them are just really, really busy. There's a lot going on in their lives."
Campaign strategists disagree. With emotions running so high among even staunch partisans, Republican and Democratic strategists say they don't know what undecided women voters will do, but they have crossed their fingers.
Winning these undecided women voters on Tuesday is not only "very important," said one strategist. "It's essential."
The Adults:
versus
The Flakes:
Funny title. "Undecided" women becoming "decisive." I assume that's the newspaper's title; how did that get past the editor?
gag...
As a woman, I believe that this voter segment will be the one most likely to respond to Bin Laden's threats and to vote for Kerry under a mistaken impression that a Kerry Presidency will avoid bringing the war to our soil.
Wha? I must agree with downeastjudy on this one.
I give this article a C- for grammar, but will amend it to a C+ for the possibility that it might really just be a clever headline gag.
These "undecided" but really pro-Kerry women need to be Dumbo-dropped into Saudi Arabia or Iran for an all-expenses paid six month vacation. See how they like it there, and then come back and tell us that "Bush is creating more terrorists."
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