Old feel needed as campaigns swing by

"You are the greatest generation this country has produced," Ernie Tasker told them

"You are the greatest generation this country has produced," Ernie Tasker told them. "Each and every one of you did your part to keep this country free. You deserve our respect, and what troubles me more than anything is people trying to scare you to vote for them."

The management of the Merrill Gardens retirement home had set a room aside and announced Mr Tasker's arrival. Twenty or so of the 77 residents had turned out, some in wheelchairs, some with frames, to hear the Bush case. On Tuesday the management will have a bus on hand for those who want to vote.

This is the swing region, from Tampa on the west coast to Daytona Beach on the east, of the swing state of Florida.

And these over-65-year-olds are the key voters, a quarter of the state electorate but usually a third of voters on the day. Last time out, 42 per cent of voters were over 60. The Republican candidate, Governor George Bush, needs them badly and many of them have been rattled by the Gore campaign's suggestion that he would threaten their pension entitlements.

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In truth neither candidate has been able to convince experts that their different solutions to bridge the long-term funding deficit in the nation's pensions system will guarantee entitlements to a future generation of retirees. Few voters understand either proposal.

"It has to be fixed," Mr Tasker told his bewildered audience. "But you will not lose one cent of your social security."

"What about prescription charges?" came the sceptical rejoinder.

This should be natural Bush ground, brother Governor Jeb Bush's patch, but the latest poll is showing Florida neck and neck, but with Mr Bush seven points up in the Tampa Bay area. Vice-President Gore was here on Wednesday night to keep up the pressure in a 25-electoral-vote state which his opponent simply must win. It was Mr Gore's 11th visit to the state, and Mr Bush has made 10. Both will be back before election day. In 1992 President George Bush carried it.

In 1996 President Bill Clinton did so. The elderly are a vulnerable but politically diverse group, retirees from all over the US, some with lots of money, others with only what a blue-collar pension will provide. They have brought with them their politics and cultures and polls show a majority are Democrats.

Last month a Mason Dixon Research poll had them leaning to Gore as much as 51 to 37 per cent - and Mr Gore's campaign focus on Medicare and "social security" (pensions) has if anything reinforced that. But in 1998 a majority of over-65s voted for Jeb Bush.

No vote is being taken for granted by either side. Household by household, home by home, they are being tracked down and canvassed, says Ms June Winters, an African-American public service union official from New York, who has been sent down here to bring out retired members for the Democrats.

And they brought in the much loved country singer Jimmy Buffet to do warm-up for the VP, the 5,000-strong swaying crowd joining in such classics as Cheese- burger in Paradise and Margaritaville.

Such lines as "I like mine with lettuce and tomatoes . . . " and the somewhat gloomier drunk's lament: "Some people claim there's a woman to blame, but I know it's my own darn fault . . . "

Mr Gore hit all the right buttons for Tampa - pensions, the price of prescriptions for the elderly, and the environment - in a familiar stomp speech but with a woodenness that surprised.

It had the sincerity of that man in the Anadin advertisement with the white coat - "with the three special ingredients, one, two, three".

And when he asked the crowd "are you with me?" there was a polite roar of support, hardly more. "We are going to win Florida," he said. "Yeah," they cheered, unconvinced.

He sounded most plausible, and was best received, on the environment when he reminded them of his support for Everglades conservation and he warned that Mr Bush's nomination of a chemical industry lobbyist to clean up Texas meant he should not be trusted.

Did they want the man who backed oil exploration in the Arctic wilderness to decide whether oil rigs should be allowed off the Florida beaches? "I will ban all gas and oil drilling off the coast of Florida," he pledged.

Mr Bush supports the current moratorium on such drilling but says he is willing to discuss new projects with state officials and business on a case by case basis. And, Mr Tasker, the spokesman for the local Republican Party, explained to The Irish Times: "Who better to deal with the problem than someone involved in the business?"

Not your best shot, Ernie. He rejects bitterly what he sees as the appropriation of issues like welfare and the environment by the Democrats, insisting that Mr Bush would seek bipartisan solutions to such problems. "Republicans also live in Florida. Jeb Bush lives in Florida. Its environment belongs to all of us," he says.

A former New York Democrat who once voted for Jack Kennedy, he says he understands the loyalty of many elderly voters to their union traditions. and to the party of FDR that in 1935 gave them the social security system. "But Jack Kennedy," he says, "was not a socialist. He was not the same as the Democrats today." The Republicans, he explains, are not the party of big money, but of small government, of government with a light touch. Hence their opposition to such programmes as affirmative action or bureaucracy in schools.

On the streets they are still not sure and the reasoning is varied. Mr Geoff Johnson and Mr James Nelson, who both work for the Dundalk-based firm Danu Industries, say they still don't know how they will vote but that the environment will certainly be crucial to their decision.

Mr Jim Greenwall, an accountant, remained unconvinced by Mr Gore and does not care if he hands Mr Bush the state with his vote for Green candidate Mr Ralph Nader.

No question of tactical voting: "I have to vote with my heart for the best man for the job," he insisted.

But Ms Bev Malley, a nurse, is leaning to Mr Gore. "His heart is in the right place, but I'm still worried he's taking too much money from special interest groups," she says, adding that "Clinton was sensational." For Ms Erica Mandelbaum, a communications consultant, the issue is simple: "A woman's right to choose. Gore." And Ernie Tasker is hoping the bus from a reassured Merrill Gardens is full.