By NEDRA PICKLER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -
Democrat John Kerry formally rolls out his campaign for the traditionally conservative-leaning veterans' vote on Friday, but President Bush's re-election team says their rival's Vietnam War experience won't be enough to win the votes of others who have served their country.
Kerry was to announce volunteer veterans coordinators in all 50 states who will try to recruit current and former soldiers to his campaign. The goal is to sign up 1 million veterans to help get out the vote for Kerry in what they say would be an unprecedented veterans organization in a presidential campaign.
John Hurley, the national director of Veterans for Kerry, says veterans will be motivated to vote for Kerry because of his war experience and their anger at diminished services from the Veterans Administration and Bush's handling of Iraq.
"I think veterans are really uneasy, particularly Vietnam vets have a haunting sense of deja vu," Hurley, who was an Army lieutenant in Vietnam, said in an interview aboard Kerry's campaign plane. "John Kerry is going to get the veteran vote. Even if it has been Republican in the past, we are going to carry it."
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