TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/87/87capts.3

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                                                                                January 4, 1988

NATION

Gray Power!


AARP emerges as the nation's most powerful special-interest
lobby


An older woman strides confidently through the local
headquarters of the American Association for Retired Persons and
looks straight at the television camera. "AARP's 27 million
members believe that together, we can make a difference," she
says. "We'll make sure you know what the candidates say--and
what they don't say--about issues." Her tone is sweetly
reasonable. But just to make sure those video- dazed viewers
in Iowa and New Hampshire sit up and listen, she shakes her
spectacles at them and adds, "If you think you've seen it all,
you ain't seen nothin' yet."

Blunt and a tad belligerent, America's senior citizens are
suddenly flexing their biceps in presidential politics. Flush
from a Capitol Hill victory that protected Social Security
increases from the budget ax, the Gray Lobby has turned its
muscle to states where early contests will winnow the field of
presidential candidates. Across the country, campaign
operatives report that no other group has emerged in this
election cycle with such unexpected force. "Any candidate who
wants to win in 1988 is not going to mess with the old folks,"
says Thomas Kiley, an adviser to Michael Dukakis.

Until this election, AARP had not focused on presidential
politics. But now the organization is launching an $8 million
get-out-the-vote effort, running a $400,000 television ad
campaign, sponsoring candidate debates in Iowa that are beamed
by satellite to other states, holding workshops for activists
and organizing mass mailings that will hit a million households
by Election Day. In doing so, it has made the sanctity of
Social Security and the expensive dream of Government-sponsored
long-term health care top issues on the 1988 agenda.

Candidates, knowing that senior citizens flock to the polls with
a vengeance, have responded with a gusher of saccharine
rhetoric. "If we can get a man to the moon, we ought to be able
to get dentures to people who built our society," went a sample
line from Democrat Paul Simon at AARP's Iowa debate. The 1,000
gray-haired activists in attendance applauded noisily. On the
way out, Wally Wakefield, a retired salesman from West Des
Moines, couldn't help gloating. "They came because of us," he
said. "We're powerful."

Founded in 1958 mainly to provide insurance for retirees, AARP
is now the nation's largest special-interest group. "Join the
Association that's bigger than most countries," boasted a recent
magazine ad. This elderly behemoth, nearly twice the size of the
AFL-CIO, continues to grow by about 8,000 new dues payers a day.
One out of nine Americans belongs, paying a $5 annual fee.
AARP offers drug and travel discounts, runs the nation's largest
group-health- insurance program and a credit union. In
addition, its savvy media operation includes Modern Maturity,
the nation's third highest circulation magazine; a wire service
that provides newspapers with "unbiased reporting" on elderly
issues; and a weekly television series.

Given AARP's clout, the mere fact that it is distributing a
voters' guide to its positions is enough to stun most Democratic
and Republican hopefuls into obsequiousness. Filing through its
beige- carpeted Washington headquarters, they submit to a
grilling:  Would they cut Social Security cost-of-living
allowances?  Would they support federal insurance for
nursing-home care?  Should  Medicare cover the cost of
outpatient prescription drugs?  So far, the candidates are
telling AARP much of what it wants to hear. As Republican Jack
Kemp put it, any politician who would tamper with Social
Security is a "candidate for a frontal lobotomy."

Other organizations of elderly are also stepping up their
political activity. Two years ago the National Council of
Senior Citizens mounted "truth squads" of retirees that traveled
the country publicizing incumbent Senators' votes on Social
Security. In Iowa the National Committee to preserve Social
Security and Medicare has taken to guerrilla tactics, disrupting
kaffeeklatsches and candidates' forums to push for higher
benefits.

Such activism reflects a dramatic demographic trend. Since 1900
the total U.S. population has tripled while the number of
elderly has risen eightfold. As today's baby boomers lurch into
their 50s during the next decade, the numbers will explode
further. The 1988 election "is a test case" for the elderly,
said Mike McCurry, press secretary to Democratic Candidate Bruce
Babbitt. "They will try to establish themselves as a political
force, and if they do, they will alter the political landscape."
Sixty-five-year-olds vote at nearly three times the rate of
eligible voters under 24. In Iowa, whose population ranks among
the oldest of any state, more than half the Democrats at the
1984 caucuses were over 50.

Gray Power is far from docile. One AARP television spot shows
an oldster relentlessly interrupting a smooth-talking politician
to pin him down on the issues. In fact, that's just what
Michael Molnar, a retired security guard, whose wife requires
$2,400 a month in nursing-home care for Alzheimer's disease, did
to Democrat Albert Gore. As Gore wound up a speech at a Salem,
N.H., nursing home, Molnar rose to ask:  Did the Senator agree
that our health-care system was a disgrace?  And what was Gore's
position on Senate Bill 1127?  Did he support the
prescription-drug plank?  What about the long-term-nursing-care
legislation?  Gore responded that he favored the
prescription-drug proposal but believed long-term nursing care
was too expensive.

A testier encounter took place in Ottumwa, Iowa, between Dukakis
and Retired Nurse Pauline Snelling, 65. Despite her red blazer
plastered with Dukakis stickers, Snelling stalked out of a town
meeting after the candidate brushed aside a question on "notch
babies," the group of seniors born between 1917 and 1921 who got
lower cots-of-living increases after Congress readjusted Social
Security benefits in 1977. "It's not what he says about the
country," she snorted. "What matters is how he answers these
questions."

While campaign politicking may be a new frontier for seniors,
their clout has long been felt in Washington. When
congressional and Administration budget negotiators sought to
cut the deficit in the wake of the Wall Street crash, they
briefly considered a proposal to scale down Social Security
cost-of-living increases. Congressman Claude Pepper, 87, held
a press conference to announce that he would force a separate
House vote on the issue. The Gray Lobby went to work. The
result?  Although programs for the elderly account for one-third
of the budget, negotiators dropped the proposal in a fright.
"These are people who have plenty of time on their hands, who
are well organized, who vote regularly, and they are a massive
political force," lamented Budget Director James Miller.

In the past AARP has exercised restraint; in 1985 it even
endorsed the Senate Republican proposal of a one-time
cost-of-living freeze on Social Security. But with the hiring
of tough-talking Lobbyist Jack Carlson as executive director,
the group began to harden its stance, partly to prevent other
organizations of the elderly from stealing the thunder. Next
on AARP's agenda:  a multibillion-dollar proposal for federal
insurance to cover long-term at-home or nursing-home care.
While other lobbies are often content with dumping a blizzard of
preprinted postcards on Capitol Hill, AARP members tend to
write their own letters. "AARP is the equivalent of an 800-lb.
gorilla," says Congressman Hal Daub, a Republican on the Social
Security subcommittee.

Although Paul Simon's recent surge in Iowa was interpreted as
a boost from a constituency that still remembers Harry Truman,
the retirees' vote seems up for grabs. So far the only
candidates who have dared stray from the party line are those
so far behind in the polls that they have little to lose. Bruce
Babbitt talks of raising taxes on Social Security benefits of
the affluent elderly. Pat Robertson and Pete du Pont warn that
Social Security is threatened with bankruptcy and advocate
shifting some of the burden to private plans. "When the
baby-boom generation retires, we're going to have to double
taxes on our kids or cut benefits in half," says du Pont.

But the front-running candidates pay fealty to the sanctity of
Social Security and ardently embrace much of what the Gray Lobby
advocates. Does this mean that AARP and the other groups will
not unite behind a single candidate and that their impact may
be somewhat diffused? Probably. But that in itself is a
victory. It shows that their energetic new force has already
helped shape the 1988 political agenda, and no doubt will
continue to do so.

--By Margot Hornblower. Reported by Steven Holmes/Washington and
Michael Riley/Des Moines