Veterans of Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Campaign For Seats in Congress

Mixed outcomes. The victors in 2006 included two Pennsylvania Democrats: Rep. Joe Sestak, a retired vice admiral who led an aircraft carrier battle group during fighting in Afghanistan, and Rep. Patrick Murphy, a former captain in the Army's 82nd Airborne who is the only Iraq combat veteran so far to collect a House seat. Jim Webb of Virginia, a former Marine commander decorated in Vietnam, was elected to the U.S. Senate that year, but Teigen's analysis looked only at House races.

Other Democrats lost marquee contests for the House in '06, notably Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a Black Hawk pilot who lost both her legs when her helicopter was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq in 2004. Murphy and Duckworth were both featured speakers at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last month.

Few underestimate the sacrifice of war veterans, particularly those, like Duckworth, who were gravely wounded. Injured or not, they've left their families, marched off to war, and tasted fear in an unpredictable, asymmetrical fight. Some outlived the chaos of combat. Many had comrades shipped out in body bags.

In the political realm, though, a warrior ethos and unflinching work ethic, while important, do not always carry the day. Candidates need to manage a campaign team, take stands on the issues, avoid gaffes, hit the pavement, sell themselves to the public, and, critically, raise big bucks, because the average House race in 2006 cost more than $1.2 million. The last chore is an eye-opener, especially for the uninitiated. In Madia's case, four years in the Marine Corps, including his six-month tour in Baghdad, didn't make it easier to ask people for money.

He says an appeal to his patriotism from Murphy, the freshman congressman, turned his head around. "Marine, you're not asking for you," the lawmaker told him when they met in May on Capitol Hill. "You're asking for your country."

Murphy, 34, who represents Bucks County, has been dispensing advice to Democratic candidates—and select Republicans he knows from his years in the military, though he'll endorse only Democrats. Meantime, he's in the midst of a second trial by fire, fighting to keep the seat he narrowly won. His opponent is the GOP's Tom Manion, a business executive and retired Marine Corps colonel whose son, a Naval Academy grad, was killed by a sniper in Iraq.

In Murphy's first race, he started with a mere $322 in his bank account and, to keep costs low, set up his campaign office in a rat-infested basement. As he recounts in his memoir, Taking the Hill: From Philly to Baghdad to the United States Congress, he had little clue about the "bare-knuckle clashes" that lay ahead. A former military lawyer, he triumphed despite an army of naysayers—"No one gave me a chance when I was running," he says now—and swift-boat-style attacks on his service record.

"Underdog" would also seem to apply to Jill Morgenthaler of Des Plaines, Ill., the only woman among the war-veteran House candidates. She is challenging Peter Roskam, the Republican who beat Duckworth two years ago. Morgenthaler, 54, a retired colonel in the Army Reserves, was a top military spokesman during the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq in 2004.

Duckworth, who is 40, says she mulled over another run but opted to stay in the job she accepted just after her defeat. She directs the Illinois Department of Veterans' Affairs.

She lost her race narrowly, stung by attacks on her military service and even a shocking snub from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which endorsed Roskam, a nonveteran. "You can work as hard as possible, but that doesn't mean you're going to win," she says, "and losing isn't the worst thing that can happen. I was devastated for three days after the election, and then I thought, 'You know what, it could be worse. I could be dead.'"