President Obama’s re-election campaign is beginning an intensified effort this week to build support among women, using the debate over the new health care law to amplify an appeal that already appears to be benefiting from partisan clashes over birth control and abortion.
On Monday, mailings will go out to one million women in more than a dozen battleground states in three separate versions for mothers, young women and older women, campaign and party officials said.
An effort called “Nurses for Obama” will begin on Wednesday, with nurses nationwide enlisted to be advocates for the health care law in their communities. And a new Web site will include links to video testimonials about the health care overhaul signed by Mr. Obama in 2010, including from a former critic who subsequently was found to have breast cancer.
Through the month, ending with what the campaign’s headquarters has designated a “Women’s Week of Action,” campaign field offices will organize phone banks, campus activities, house parties and media events featuring local residents helped by the law, officials say.
The campaign is trying to use the political climate to regain the traditional Democratic advantage among women, even as moderate Republican and independent women voice disenchantment with the Republican focus on social issues.
Women were 53 percent of the national vote in 2008, and given Mr. Obama’s and his party’s continuing weakness among white men, they are crucial to his re-election. Though Mr. Obama won 56 percent of their votes four years ago, women narrowly went for Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections that cost Democrats control of the House.
The campaign’s effort to rally women around the health care law had been long planned, to coincide with the second anniversary of Mr. Obama signing it on March 23, campaign officials said. But the effort has gained intensity, they added, because of recent controversies over contraception, abortion and education in Washington and in state capitals that have energized people in the campaign’s far-flung field offices who are essential to putting any national strategy into action.
For example, in New Hampshire, a swing state, the seven field offices will hold 16 phone banks to contact female voters about the benefits for them in the health care law. On Wednesday, when the “Nurses for Obama” effort is to be announced, nurses in New Hampshire will be making the calls, field organizers say.
In Virginia, another battleground, Barbara Kanninen volunteered a month ago to help lead a “Women for Obama” network and said “it’s growing fast” thanks to the debates in Washington and Richmond. “The conversations at these house parties are very much dominated by women concerned about all this,” said Ms. Kanninen, a freelance economist and mother of two teenage boys. Her own house party drew women that she did not know and three members of her choral group with whom she had never discussed politics, Ms. Kanninen said, and each day brings at least one new message of interest on her Facebook page from some woman who has heard of the group.
“Up until six weeks ago, Democrats suffered from an intensity gap, but this has closed as women — particularly suburban women — have turned against the G.O.P.,” said Peter D. Hart, a Democratic pollster who is not affiliated with the campaign.
Some Republicans and independent analysts say the current debate over social issues will fade soon, trumped by whatever happens with the economy. “Nobody thinks it will matter in a couple months,” said Vin Weber, a Republican lobbyist and former congressman. “I certainly don’t.”
But other Republicans are worried.
“The whole party’s image has taken a beating,” said John Feehery, a public affairs consultant in Washington and a senior aide to Congressional Republican leaders through the 1990s. Mr. Feehery called a recent essay on his Web site that offered advice to other Republicans, “Listen to Your Wife.”
Mr. Obama is doing his part to frame the appeal to women. His pitch at a fund-raising rally on Friday night in Houston was typical: He opened an account of his accomplishments by saying, “Change is the first bill I signed into law that says women deserve an equal day’s pay for an equal day’s work.”
Mr. Obama closed with the health care law and cited the same points that his campaign is highlighting: an end to insurance company caps on lifetime coverage, mandated coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, the ability of young adults to stay on their parents’ policies until age 26, and for preventive services like contraception. “So when you see politicians who are trying to take us back to the days when this care was more expensive and harder to get for women — and I know you’re seeing some of that here in Texas — you just remember we can’t let them get away with it,” he said.
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