Gray Power!

By Margot Hornblower

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- insura nce 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 cost-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.

With reporting by Steven Holmes/Washington and Michael Riley/Des Moines