Pandering 101

What is it about presidential candidates from Massachusetts trying to woo the hunting vote?

Is Romney a Hunter? Depends on What Hunt Is
By MICHAEL LUO
Published: April 6, 2007

WASHINGTON, April 5 — In seeking their support for his presidential campaign, Mitt Romney has struggled over the last few months to reassure Republican conservatives that he is one of them.

When asked on Tuesday about his stance on guns, Mr. Romney, as he has more than once, portrayed himself as a sportsman, a “hunter pretty much all my life,” who strongly supported a right to bear arms.

He even trotted out some remembrances, recalling that in hunting with his cousins as a teenager, he struggled to kill rabbits with a single-shot .22-caliber rifle. When they lent him a semiautomatic, it got a lot easier, he said, drawing laughs from an appreciative crowd in Keene, N.H. The last time he went hunting, he said, was last year, when he shot quail in Georgia and “knocked down quite a few birds.”

“So I’ve been pretty much hunting all my life,” he said again.

But on Wednesday, The Associated Press reported that Mr. Romney had in fact been hunting only twice: once during that summer when he was 15 and spending time at a relative’s ranch in Idaho, and again on the occasion last year, a quail shoot at a fenced-in game preserve in Georgia with major donors to the Republican Governors Association.

On Thursday, with Mr. Romney facing reporters’ repeated questions about the A.P. account, his campaign was forced to address his hunting résumé. A campaign spokesman, Eric Fehrnstrom, said Mr. Romney had gone hunting repeatedly during his teenage summer at the ranch. Mr. Romney has also shot small game on his Utah property, said Mr. Fehrnstrom, who added that he did not know how often.

“Mitt Romney is not a big-game hunter,” he said, “but he knows how to handle a firearm.”

Remember these John Kerry photo-ops from the 2004 campaign?

Kerry's Hunting Trip Targets Conservatives

By NEDRA PICKLER

Associated Press Writer

The Associated Press

Updated: 4:00 p.m. PT Oct 21, 2004

BOARDMAN, Ohio - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry said he bagged a goose on his swing-state hunting trip Thursday, but his real target was the voters who may harbor doubts about him.

Kerry returned after a two-hour hunting trip wearing a camouflage jacket and carrying a 12-gauge shotgun, but someone else carried his bird.

"I'm too lazy," Kerry joked. "I'm still giddy over the Red Sox. It was hard to focus."

The Massachusetts senator was referring to Boston's American League championship Wednesday night. He stayed up late cheering his hometown team onto victory, then got up for a 7 a.m. hunting trip at a supporter's produce farm.

Kerry adviser Mike McCurry said it's important in the final days of the campaign that voters "get a better sense of John Kerry, the guy."

That means the Democratic senator is spending some of the dwindling time before Election Day hunting, talking about his faith and watching his beloved Red Sox.

It's all part of an effort to win over swing voters who may be open to voting against President Bush but aren't sure they feel any connection with Kerry.

...

Campaigning in Ohio, Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday criticized Kerry's hunting excursion, saying, "The second amendment is more than just a photo opportunity."

The National Rifle Association said it bought a full-page ad in Thursday's Youngstown newspaper that says Kerry is posing as a sportsman while opposing gun-owners' rights. Kerry has denied NRA claims that he wants to "take away" guns, but he supported the ban on assault-type weapons and requiring background checks at gun shows

"If John Kerry thinks the Second Amendment is about photo ops, he's Daffy," says the ad the NRA said would run in The Vindicator. It features a large photo of Kerry with his finger on a shotgun trigger but looking in another direction.

Meanwhile, labor unions have been circulating fliers among workers that say Kerry won't take away guns. "He likes his own gun too much," says one of the fliers from the Building Trades Department of the AFL-CIO that features a picture of Kerry aiming a shotgun.

Kerry's aides said he spent about two hours hunting at a blind set up in a cornfield. More than two dozen journalists were invited to the farm outside of Youngstown to see Kerry emerge from the field, but none witnessed Kerry taking any shots.

Kerry was accompanied by Ohio Democratic Rep. Ted Strickland; Bob Bellino, a member of Ducks Unlimited; and Neal Brady, assistant park manager of Indian Lake State Park in western Ohio. Each of his companions carried a dead goose on the way back, while Kerry walked beside them with his 12-gauge in one hand and the other free to pet a yellow Labrador named Woody.

Kerry said each of the four men shot a goose.

The last time Kerry went hunting was October 2003 in Iowa, a state where he was trailing in the Democratic primary but came from behind to win.

Hunting is of particular interest in several of the states that are still up for grabs in the presidential race. Kerry bought his hunting license last Saturday in one of the most critical _ Ohio, which has 20 electoral votes.

Kerry bought the nonresident license and a special wetlands habitat stamp, which lets him hunt waterfowl.

Memo to any would-be candidate: don't pretend to be something you're not to try to appeal to a voter bloc if you can't back it up. Both of these attempts to connect with hunters reek of insincerity and they can probably smell it coming from a mile away.

Insulting the Troops

This story is completely overblown.

By now you've all heard the controversy over John Kerry's widely cited comments during a campaign event with Phil Angelides earlier this week.

Kerry has said that he messed up the punchline for the joke. I have no reason to doubt that, because to think the contrary would imply that he planned those comments in advance, which no rational person would think was the case.

But between the event on Monday and Kerry's two apologies today [the first being a half-hearted "apology" during a phone interview with Don Imus], the Republicans dusted off the Anti-Kerry Machine that worked so well for them in 2004 and turned him into a political piñata.

The only real upside effect to this for Republicans is firing up the base, which it did to great effect in 2004 every time Kerry stuck his foot in his mouth. Remember how they hammered him to great effect over "I voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it"? Other than the red meat value of energizing their base, I see no benefit to Republicans in trying to keep this story alive. However, there is no down ballot effect on the Democrats, since Kerry is not on any ballot this year.

This might have been an issue in the Tennessee Senate race, where Harold Ford was Kerry's campaign co-chairman two years ago and Bob Corker might have tried to make an issue out of it at the last minute. Ford defused that possible scenario by criticizing Kerry and calling for him to apologize. Jon Tester also criticized him.

The only real damage to this is that it neutralized Kerry as a surrogate or campaigner during the final week. Politically, Kerry did the correct thing by removing himself from the equation and not becoming a distraction to the Democratic candidates he was going to be campaigning for. If this had happened weeks or months ago, Kerry's absence as a fundraiser would have hurt the Democrats. You can argue over whether the apology was or was not necessary, but in giving it Kerry has taken away the Republicans' ability to continue to push the story. By neutralizing the issue and removing himself from the races, Kerry is doing the right thing for his party.

That would have been the end of it, but along came John Boehner and the Democrats figured out very quickly that two can play at that game.

Howard Dean and Harry Reid immediately entered the fray, putting out statements calling on Boehner to apologize. I doubt this will get anywhere near the amount of traction that Kerry's comments got, but Republicans made it fair game as an issue and Democrats are fighting back.