Iraq vets are coming back to run as Democrats.

A few days after last year's presidential election, Ladda (Tammy) Duckworth was piloting her helicopter north of Baghdad when she saw a ball of fire at her knees. A rocket-propelled grenade had struck her Black Hawk at its chin bubble, close to her seat. When she awoke 10 days later, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, she found she had lost her legs, but none of her desire to serve. For the next year, as she recovered from her devastating injuries, she became one of the capital's favorite troops: an inspirational war story amid the grinding violence of Iraq. She was a senator's guest at the State of the Union and a witness before a congressional hearing on health care for war casualties. As Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson put it, she was simply "a true American hero."

Duckworth is part of a new breed of macho Democrats, joining eight Iraq veterans who have already announced themselves as candidates in next year's congressional elections. (The party is also reaching out to veterans of wars in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Vietnam, as well as former CIA officers and FBI agents.)

The Capitol Brigade
News: Iraq Veterans Running for Congress in 2006

By Jonathan Stein

October 21, 2005

-snip-
That number will jump up if Iraq veterans have anything to do about it. Driven by the unique relevance their experience has to current events and inspired by Paul Hackett’s near victory in an against-all-odds race in Ohio, soldiers back from the Middle East are scrambling to get their names on congressional ballots for 2006. Hackett, though, was not the first to run, or to lose. Marine Steve Brozak completed active duty in Haiti, Bosnia and Iraq before mounting, and losing, a high profile 2004 election fight in New Jersey. Fellow Marine David Ashe was outspent 3-to-1 in Virginia and lost by 10 points that same cycle. A Republican veteran in Wisconsin also lost, and Jean Schmidt, the woman who beat Hackett in the August 2nd special election, beat a different Iraq veteran in her Republican primary. All of this losing means that no Iraq War veteran sits in Congress today.

That isn't stopping Iraq veterans from running in 2006. Ashe is running again for the House in Virginia, and Hackett is taking a shot at the Senate. Andrew Duck is running for Congress in Maryland, Tim Dunn in North Carolina, and Patrick Murphy and Brian Lentz in Pennsylvania: Iraq vets all. Tim Walz, a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, is running in Minnesota, and two veterans who played crucial roles in the Iraq War stateside are running in Pennsylvania and New York.

Not surprisingly, these men and their nascent campaigns have significant similarities. They all claim to have ideas and political assets beyond their military experience, but all play up their service continually. Murphy, for example, introduces himself by saying, "Hi, I’m Patrick Murphy. I’m an Iraq war veteran – I served in Baghdad and I’m home and I’m running for Congress." Most take a page out of Hackett’s play book, running on a pro-troops, anti-Bush platform but hedging on the war itself. ("I’m not anti-war, I’m anti-failure," is how one candidate put it.) They hope that voters dissatisfied with the lack of progress in Iraq will elect candidates who see the value in America’s overseas adventures, but would plan them better. "We’re a nation at war," says Murphy. "Who better than veterans to step up and have an honest discussion about the challenges we’re facing?"

Another similarity is this: Ashe, Duck, Dunn, Murphy, Lentz, and the others are, like Hackett, Democrats. In total, 10 Democratic vets are running, or considering a run, for Congress. (A few more may declare in the coming weeks.) The Republicans, by contrast, can only commit to two. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the organ of the Party establishment responsible for recruiting and running candidates, explains the phenomenon by citing the failures of Republicans in Washington. "We have a Republican-controlled Congress that has failed to provide for troops returning from Iraq, and failed to provide on promises on health care and services for families," says spokeswoman Sarah Feinberg. " are naturally running in an opposite way."

http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2005/10/iraq_vets_running_for_congress.html