Candidates woo military in N.C.

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have made service-related issues a notable part of their campaigns in the state

This is the third in a four-part series looking at the presidential candidates' positions on issues that affect North Carolina.

Last week, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigned around North Carolina with eight retired military leaders in tow, among them Gen. Hugh Shelton, a North Carolina native and retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. At stops in Fayetteville and Jacksonville, her backdrop and podium bore the slogan "Solutions for a Strong Military."

Her opponent in the Democratic presidential primary Tuesday, Sen. Barack Obama, countered by releasing a list of veterans from across the state who are campaigning as part of his Veterans for Obama group. At his speech in Fayetteville last month, Obama was introduced by a Medal of Honor winner, and Monday he talked about taking better care of veterans, even though his Chapel Hill audience was unlikely to include many with military connections.

"No more homeless veterans, no more begging for disability payments," Obama said.

For more than 100,000 active duty, National Guard and Reserve troops and their families, the biggest consequence of a Clinton or Obama presidency would likely come from their plans to pull troops out of Iraq. Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, has said U.S. forces need to stay there until the country is politically stable -- even if that takes years.

But with North Carolina being home to more than three quarters of a million veterans, two of the world's largest military bases and a state National Guard that has played an outsize role in Iraq, the Democrats have been quick to evoke veterans' issues on the campaign trail in this state and to deploy veterans to campaign for them at legion halls and VFW posts.

Some veterans like what they hear about expanded benefits and improvements to U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' health- care system. Many, though, are skeptical that any politicians, Democrat or Republican, will do what they promise. Others say even if the candidates are serious, they won't have the power to make major changes.

"No one person can change the VA," said Richard Campbell, 61, of Knightdale, a veteran of the Persian Gulf War. "It's just too big."

VA plans

Both Democratic candidates have said they would set up a system to stabilize funding for VA health care to prevent budget shortfalls that in some years have left hospital administrators scrambling months before the end of the fiscal year. Both also promise more VA workers to cut through bureaucracy and trim backlogs.

They promise also to boost efforts to treat mental health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder and to prevent homelessness among veterans.

A study published in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health found that 1.8 million veterans were uninsured and couldn't get VA health care, many of them because of a 2003 Bush administration order that barred some veterans with moderate incomes from the VA system. Obama and Clinton both say they would open VA health care to all veterans.

Jim Jansen of Cary is one of those who can't use the VA system now because of his income and because he doesn't have a service-related health issue. If he became eligible, he could get cheaper drugs, he said, saving perhaps $50 a month. It's not a critical amount for him, but it would help because he's retired and on a fixed income.

Jansen says he's in pretty good health, though, and other veterans with more extensive problems would gain even more.

Vietnam veteran Earl Mann of Raleigh wonders whether the Democrats or McCain will live up to the promises they make.