HK Bain was home in suburban Denver last week, hardly paying attention to the television, when he heard a snippet of Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican convention that stopped him in mid-step.
"To the families of special-needs children all across this country," Palin said, "I have a message: For years, you sought to make America a more welcoming place for your sons and daughters. I pledge to you that if we are elected, you will have a friend and advocate in the White House."
Bain -- whose daughter Megan, a high school senior, is one of the more than 350,000 Americans who have Down syndrome -- couldn't believe his ears.
"I clapped as loud as I could," he said. "We need a friend in the White House."
Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain touched on the issue in his acceptance speech Thursday, when he referred to a Pennsylvania couple whose youngest son has autism.
"Their lives should matter to the people they elect to office. They matter to me," the Arizona senator said.
In the days since McCain chose Palin, the governor of Alaska, as his vice presidential nominee on Aug. 29, his campaign has shown off her 5-month-old son, Trig, who was born with Down syndrome. The campaign has also let it be known that Palin has a nephew with autism.
The attention lavished on Trig, who can often be seen on TV being cradled by a family member, and who was on the covers of People and OK magazines, has helped the Republican ticket focus on an issue no one can debate: the need to help children with disabilities. The campaign almost surely will retell the story in commercials and appearances from now through election day, particularly as Democrats seek to portray McCain and Palin as conservatives who are out of touch with middle America.
McCain and Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, each have pressed to do more for disabled Americans. In the Senate, McCain co-sponsored the landmark Americans with Disability Act in 1990. Obama carried similar legislation as a state senator and sought increased spending for veterans with traumatic brain injury in the Senate.
An Obama campaign aide said the Illinois senator has a record of trying to make sure disabled children "are treated equally, to ensure that they have educational opportunities from which to choose, to protect them from abuses, and to make our nation accessible to all."
