Democrats step up efforts to woo military veterans ahead of midterms

BERNARDVILLE, N.J. - Rebecca Bennett was addressing about 30 voters, many of them veterans she knew from her work in the community, in a gaming store owned by one of her supporters that featured bookshelves lined with board games such as “Eldritch Horror” and “Lost Ruins of Arnak.”

Bennett was trying to explain what serving in Congress has in common with her service as a Navy helicopter pilot. “If you don’t land exactly where you need to, you’re going to crash and people are going to die,” she said. “The stakes were life and death then, and they are life and death now.”

Bennett is one of a crop of military veterans that Democrats are urgently recruiting to run for Congress in 2026. Party leaders fret that a large number of voters — conservative, rural, traditionalist, white — have been written off by Democrats, and they hope veterans can persuade some of these voters to at least consider them again.

“People with national security backgrounds are uniquely positioned to be able to go have conversations with voters that may not entertain voting for, you know, I’d say, a traditional Democrat,” Bennett said in an interview. “We all raised our hand and said, ‘Hey, I want to serve this country in this capacity, to the point of being willing to sacrifice my life for this,’ and I think people appreciate that.”

The 2024 elections delivered a shock to Democrats. Some party leaders believe voters who disliked President Donald Trump chose him anyway because they saw Democrats as such an unpalatable alternative, considering them weak, unpatriotic and culturally alien.

Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colorado), a former Army Ranger who is helping lead House Democrats’ recruitment efforts, said veterans can engage with voters who might otherwise be unreceptive to the party.

“We’re not having a policy debate as much as we think we are,” Crow said. “So much of this is about identity, belonging, culture and a sense of respect.”

Rahm Emanuel, a former Chicago mayor and congressman, adopted a similar playbook when he headed Democrats’ successful push to retake the House in 2006. “You want to have candidates that open up a segment of that electorate that otherwise would be closed to Democrats,” Emanuel said. “Because of the background and personal biography of these candidates, they get a second look from voters who normally would not give Democrats even a first look.”

But the party has a lot to overcome in this arena. Veterans supported Trump by 65-34 percent in 2024, according to exit polls. Of the 98 veterans in Congress, 70 are Republicans and 28 are Democrats, according to figures compiled by Military Times.

Mike Marinella, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, which coordinates GOP House races, said the Democrats’ ability to recruit a few veterans will not overcome their fundamental disconnect with voters. “Democrats are wildly out of touch with the American people, and no amount of recruitment will change that fact,” Marinella said.

Other conservatives agreed. “I don’t see a lot of logical people moving over to the party of irrational behavior,” said Jared Craig, national vice president of Veterans for America First. “The idea of fighting for family and nation and your way of life means more when you have an administration that believes in that way of life, as opposed to an administration who admires non-families and LGBT wokeism.”

Even a small shift toward either party could be decisive in 2026, especially in the House, where Democrats need a net gain of just three seats to retake the majority. Control of that chamber could be critical, allowing Democrats not only to block GOP bills but also hold hearings, issue subpoenas and conduct oversight of the Trump administration.

Democratic leaders say seven military veterans so far are running in competitive House districts without a Democratic incumbent, and they predict there will be more. (Some, including Bennett, still face primaries.) They include candidates like Cait Conley, a former Army officer who deployed overseas six times and hopes to challenge Rep. Michael Lawler (R-New York).

Conley’s campaign is making sure no one misses the fact that she’s a veteran. Her campaign video shows her working out in a gym, lifting weights and flipping an enormous tire as phrases such as “Special Operations” and “terrorist hunter” appear on-screen. “In the Special Ops community there’s a saying: Run to the sound of the guns,” Conley says in the video. “That’s what I’ve done my entire life.”

In an interview, Conley said military service is a unifying force for Americans.

“When they see me as a veteran, they don’t see me as a Democrat or Republican. They see me as someone who has done everything they can for this country,” she said. “There is a level of trust there in terms of being able to step up, do the hard work, not waver, understand the stakes.”

Democrats have struggled with the notion that they are anti-military at least since the Vietnam era, when many Democrats opposed the war and some appeared at raucous anti-war demonstrations. Derek Buckaloo, a history professor at Coe College in Iowa, said the dynamic is interlaced with other factors; while 72 percent of white veterans favor the GOP, for example, 82 percent of Black veterans support Democrats.

“In some ways, we are dealing with the legacy of the 1960s and the cultural wars that came out of that era,” Buckaloo said. “That era divided Americans on fundamental issues of race and gender and, in the case of the military, America’s role in the world.”

Ronald Reagan was especially effective at branding the GOP the pro-military, pro-America party. And when Democrats nominated a Vietnam War hero, John F. Kerry, for president in 2004, Republicans defeated him by highlighting his protests against the war and falsely questioning his military record.

The Trump era is a little different, as the president took office amid a wave of conservative anti-war populism that followed the Iraq War. He has surrounded himself with the power and pageantry of the military — sending bombers to strike Iran, holding a parade on the Army’s 250th birthday — while also decrying “warmongers” and “endless wars.”

Democrats argue that Trump is brazenly politicizing the armed forces and using them to glorify himself. They note that the date of the parade was Trump’s own birthday as well as the Army’s, and that he delivered a highly political speech at Fort Bragg in which he induced service members to boo his political adversaries. At the same time, they add, he is planning to cut 83,000 employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs and has fired thousands of federal employees who are veterans.

“There is no doubt that Donald Trump, for a decade now of his political life, has used the military and used veterans when it has benefited him,” said former congressman Max Rose (D-New York), an Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient. “But when it comes to having power and doing the right thing by those groups, he fails time and again.”

Not coincidentally, some of the Democratic Party’s biggest rising stars are now people who have served in the military or the intelligence agencies. They often present themselves as a new breed of Democrat — plainspoken, unabashedly patriotic and sometimes vulgar. They include such figures such as Sens. Ruben Gallego of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, as well as the two Democrats running for governor in November: Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey.

Buckaloo said being a veteran is hardly a golden ticket to political office. In the Vietnam generation, he noted, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were elected president despite not serving overseas; Kerry and Republican John McCain, both war heroes, lost in the general election.

Still, Rose, who serves as senior adviser to VoteVets, which promotes liberal veterans running for office, said those who have served have a unique platform. The GOP has no business portraying itself as the party of strong defense, he argued, and “the most important messengers in that fight are people who have put on the uniform themselves.”

Democrats hope Bennett is one of those messengers.

She served for more than a decade as a Navy helicopter pilot, flying missions and deploying overseas, and is now in the Air National Guard. Like many other veteran candidates, Bennett plays up her service; the main photo on her campaign website shows her in uniform, with a message that she is “ready to serve” her district.

The task may not be easy. If she wins the Democratic primary, Bennett will face Rep. Tom Kean Jr., a two-term congressman whose father was a popular governor. Kean’s office did not respond to several requests for comment.

New Jersey’s 7th District is hotly contested in an era when true swing seats are increasingly rare, going for Trump in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020 and Trump again last year. Kean won his seat in 2022 by knocking off a Democratic incumbent, who himself had flipped it from the GOP just four years earlier. (The seat became somewhat more Republican after a recent redistricting.)

At the recent event at the Bearded Dragon gaming store in suburban Bernardville, Bennett listened as several veterans complained about the military’s process for transitioning them back into the community, which one called “useless.”

Paul Snyder, 49, who served in the Army for 24 years, recounted that many of the doctors in VA clinics he visits are aging and may not be working much longer. “Some of the doctors are barely making it. … I think we’re very close to a crisis,” he said.

Bennett was sympathetic. “It’s tough. It’s really tough,” she said.

Also in attendance was John Perez, 41, a former Army officer who deployed twice to Iraq. He is a registered Republican but said he is supporting Bennett. When a candidate has served in the military, Perez said, “It tells me you’re a principled person who will put country first, and who will support and defend the Constitution.”

Republicans say Kean is a successful congressman who is helping his state. In May, NRCC spokeswoman Maureen O’Toole issued a statement lauding Kean as a “steadfast voice,” adding, “Tom Kean Jr. is delivering on his promises and putting common sense back in Washington.”

Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Washington), who is spearheading Democrats’ efforts to retake the House, said she expects more veterans to announce their candidacy in coming months.

“Veterans have a record of commitment to public service,” DelBene said. “They are mission oriented, they are real and they are relatable.”