BANGOR – One is a wartime president. The other a wartime veteran.

For the country’s roughly 26 million veterans, choosing between President Bush and Democrat John Kerry is not expected to be as cut and dried as it has been in elections past.

“Bush will probably get a solid majority, but Kerry won’t be blown away,” predicted Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, emphasizing the potential sway the veterans vote could have in a close November contest. “This year, [veterans] are critical.”

On Tuesday the battle for the veterans’ vote came to Bangor, with former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland, a chairman of Kerry’s national campaign, blasting Bush’s wartime tenure at a press conference on the steps of the Penobscot County Courthouse.

About an hour later, a group of veterans for Bush met across town at campaign headquarters to show their support for the incumbent, who polls say maintains an edge over Kerry on national security issues.

Cleland, who lost an arm and two legs in Vietnam, took the Bush administration to task for what he called its mishandling of the Iraq war, which last week recorded its 1,000th American casualty as the administration conceded that insurgents controlled four major cities.

“There is no way people can go into the voting booth and feel … they are more secure,” Cleland said, on several occasions equating the Iraq conflict to Vietnam, a guerrilla war that claimed more than 58,000 American lives. “This is war without end and a war without allies.”

Before the news conference, which drew a small group of area veterans, Cleland said in an interview inside the courthouse that he believed Bush was hoping to win the election by creating an atmosphere of “perpetual fear and perpetual war.”

Veterans make up about 13 percent of the national electorate. In Maine’s 2nd Congressional District – considered a battleground in the presidential race – that number is roughly 16 percent, making the fight for the veterans vote all the more intense.

At the Bush rally in Bangor, supporters pointed to successes in Iraq – the opening of schools and hospitals and the restoration of clean water – as indications of progress in the country. Bush campaign officials used the rally, announced after news of Cleland’s visit, to praise those who have served.

“President Bush believes that veterans have helped shape the American character and their service represents the highest form of citizenship,” said Jim Tobin, chairman of Bush’s re-election campaign in New England.

James Smith, a former Marine who was stationed in Iraq, dismissed Democrats’ claims that America has stretched its troops, including its Guard and Reserve, too thin, rattling off numbers to demonstrate that only about one-third of the country’s troops were deployed.

“That’s not bad,” he said.

Younger veterans such as Smith and active-duty personnel tend to be more loyal to the commander-in-chief, Sabato said, a strong indication they would vote Republican in 2004. Also entering into Bush’s popularity, he said, could be his efforts to boost pay for active-duty military personnel about 20 percent during his tenure.

As a voting bloc, veterans are anything but single-minded, with drastic political differences depending on the era of service, Sabato said.

Between 55 percent and 60 percent of veterans tend to vote Republican, with stronger GOP support coming from Vietnam-era vets – who often equate Democrats with the anti-war movement of the 1960s – and veterans of more recent wars.

By way of contrast, World War II and Korean War veterans tend to favor Democrats, as they came of age in the era of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.

Because of his military background, although it has been the subject of controversy, experts say Kerry is expected to poll better than many of his recent Democratic counterparts, particularly President Clinton, who Sabato said never won the allegiances – or many votes – of rank-and-file soldiers.