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

With elections two months away, there's a quiet surge sweeping the nation from Maine to California, as veterans steeled from tours in Iraq and Afghanistan test their mettle in a new and bare-knuckled arena. They're running for Congress.

Two years ago, much was made of the "Fighting Dems" seeking seats in the House and Senate. Only a few prevailed. This time, the Republican Party is not lacking for candidates, since it counts 11 men in its camp who have had recent combat tours, equal to the number of battle-tested Democrats trying for congressional seats.

Having served in the armed forces by no means guarantees success on Election Day. Still, the potential influx of veterans, particularly with no end in sight to today's wars, will most likely, in the years ahead, change the face of Congress, which has been relatively light on vets since the Vietnam era.

One of the Democrats' best prospects is in the Midwest, where ex-marine Ashwin Madia, 30, is holding his own in an against-the-odds battle for an open seat in a suburban Minneapolis district that has sent Republicans to the House for the past 48 years.

The race pits an Iraq war veteran against a veteran of political wars in the state capital. "I don't have experience in St. Paul, but I have experience in Baghdad," boasts Madia, a lawyer and former captain. His only previous election win came when he was chosen the student body president at the University of Minnesota, but he turned heads when he won the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party's endorsement last spring over a rival favored by the state's political establishment up to and including former Vice President Walter Mondale.

Three tours. On the West Coast, the GOP is betting on Duncan D. Hunter to capture his father's (and namesake's) seat in the San Diego area. Hunter, 31, who was working for a high-tech firm on 9/11, met with Marine recruiters soon after and enrolled in the first Marine Officer Candidate School convened in the wake of the attacks. Since then, Hunter has served two tours in Iraq—he saw fierce fighting in Fallujah during his second deployment—and one more recently in Afghanistan.

So far, he's outgunning his rival in this largely Republican enclave on several counts. His war chest is fat, his name identification is huge, and helping to lead the charge is his father, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, who is retiring after 28 years in Congress. A captain in the Marine Reserves, the younger Hunter, making his first bid for office, has a succinct slogan that speaks volumes: "Called to serve, ready to lead."

He says he's running "for the same reason I joined the Marine Corps after 9/11, to protect America and keep it safe."

Even in the unlikely event that Hunter stumbles, this sun-soaked district crowded with sailors and marines will still end up electing a man who has left boot prints in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hunter's rival is Democrat Mike Lumpkin, 43, once the deputy commander of all U.S. special operations forces in Iraq—roughly 2,000 Army Rangers, Green Berets, and Navy SEALs scattered in 40 locations. Lumpkin was in and out of hot spots before retiring from the Navy in 2007 after 21 years. "I was in Central and South America on counternarcotics operations when my opponent was in grade school," he says. "I have a master's degree in national security. I'm more than just a guy who stood behind a rifle."

Analysts say other top prospects nationally include two Ohioans, Republican Steve Stivers, a state senator who served in Iraq as a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard, and Democrat John Boccieri, an Air Force major who flew C-130 Hercules cargo planes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another leading contender is western New York state's Jon Powers, an Army captain and artillery platoon leader in Iraq, who is running as a Democrat.

It's difficult to generalize about the troops who have laid down their arms and shed their uniforms to run for office. Some are political newcomers; some are not. Some already hold office at the state or local level. A handful are decent bets for House seats, but a larger number are destined for defeat, according to political analysts following the races.

Regardless of who they are or where they served, they all echo Maine Republican Charlie Summers, a lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserves who returned in May from public affairs duties in Iraq. "As someone who has served in a combat zone," says Summers, 48, "I not only understand the kinetic side of the equation—the operational side—but the human side of the equation and the needs of those who have served, those who have lost a limb, got burned, had traumatic brain injury, or post-traumatic stress disorder."

Filling in. He was among a small number of hopefuls whose campaigns were disrupted when duty called. Summers, who deployed in the summer of 2007, left his candidacy in the hands of his wife, Ruth, 37, who, incidentally, is a Navy veteran herself. In his absence, she stood in for him at debates, gave speeches, and hit up donors.

The Pentagon has strict guidelines prohibiting active-duty service members from campaigning for office or even taking behind-the-scenes roles as advisers. They can, however, donate money to candidates, put political bumper stickers on their personal vehicles, and, when not in uniform, attend fundraisers.

Charlie Summers, who followed his wife's progress by reading Maine papers online, returned from Iraq with just a month before a two-man primary election in June—and won. He's not a neophyte, though, since this is his third attempt for a congressional seat, and, earlier, he spent nearly a decade working for Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican.

Hunter, too, temporarily put his candidacy in the hands of aides and his wife, Margaret. Google Alerts helped him keep abreast of how things were going. After he returned last fall from the deployment, he said getting up to speed in the race was "like going from zero to 60 in seconds."

Not unexpectedly, the Republicans running tend to voice support for the war in Iraq, while Democrats favor redeploying troops from Iraq and redoubling efforts in Afghanistan. Regardless of party, the candidates acknowledge Iraq has receded in the public's mind, supplanted by concern over energy, gas prices, and the economy, and they're tailoring campaigns accordingly.

Invariably, candidates for office trumpet military credentials, if they have them, especially in the wake of 9/11. In noisy campaigns, the biographical detail is a symbolically rich way to convey to voters "the obviously desirable traits of sacrifice, selflessness, patriotism, duty to country," observes political scientist Jeremy Teigen of Ramapo College of New Jersey. "People can digest those concepts with just that one little tag: 'military veteran.' "

In the current Congress, about 2 in 5 senators and 3 in 10 House members are military veterans, though the proportion shrinks when it comes to combat service. Only 9 percent of senators and 0.5 percent of House lawmakers can make that claim.

According to Teigen, both chambers were flush with veterans after World War II. There were only 95 in 1941, but the number had swelled to 323 by 1959. That began dropping in the 1970s, in part because the draft ended in 1973, says Peter Feaver, a political scientist and military scholar at Duke University.

Feaver has examined military veterans in Congress and the cabinet from 1815 to the period leading up to 9/11. He concluded that the greater the preponderance of veterans, the less the likelihood of the United States engaging in military action, but as a corollary, when force is used, it's in a big way. "It's sort of like the Powell Doctrine. Force is used rarely but decisively," he says. Translated to barracks-speak: War is hell, but if you're in for a dime, you're in for a dollar.

Teigen, in his research, homed in on whether being a veteran helps win elections. He analyzed recent House races, looking only at contests that featured a Democrat against a Republican, eliminating incumbents who did not have to face a major-party rival. He cast a wide net with respect to veterans, including anyone with active-duty service, from a theoretical former supply clerk at Fort Dix in New Jersey to a Medal of Honor winner. In 2006 House races across the nation, Republican veterans did slightly better than nonveterans, but Democratic veterans had no significant advantage over Democrats lacking military backgrounds. "The 'Fighting Dems' were an extremely important symbolic plank in the effort to retake both chambers, but the success Democrats enjoyed cannot be placed at the feet of veterans," Teigen says.

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.'"