Highest Number of Military Veterans Running for Congress Since 2012: Report

Early voting for the midterms started in Virginia on Sept. 23. inside the early voting room in the Fairfax County Government Center, an early voting site, in Fairfax, Va., on Oct. 7, 2022. (Terri Wu/The Epoch Times)

An increasing number of individuals with military experience are running in the 2022 elections this year, new research has found.

According to research by Veterans Campaign and Military Times, 184 House candidates with some degree of military experience won major party primaries earlier this year and are set to appear on state ballots in the upcoming midterms in November.

Additionally, 12 more candidates with military experience who won U.S. Senate primaries will also appear on ballots, marking a total of 196 candidates.

Of those candidates, 126 are running as Republicans while 66 are running as Democrats, in line with recent trends—GOP veteran candidates have typically made up more than 60 percent of those running for Congress in every election excluding 2014, when they made up 57 percent, according to the study.

Alaska’s Libertarian candidate Chris Bye, and the Green Party’s Michael Earnest Kerrr, who is running in California’s 10th congressional district, which includes parts of Contra Costa and Alameda counties, are also on next month’s ballot.

Overall, that represents a roughly 7 percent increase in candidates with military experience compared to the 2020 election and the highest number since 2012, according to the study.

“We definitely are seeing more veterans getting involved in congressional races,” Seth Lynn, executive director of the Veterans Campaign, told the Military Times. However, Lynn noted that many of the candidates are “still finding themselves in districts that just aren’t winnable.”

American Voters Like Political Leaders With Military Experience

Additionally, more veteran candidates appeared on the ballot prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the pre-Vietnam era, the study notes.

Lynn attributed that to a change in demographics, noting that the number of American veterans decreased after the Vietnam war ended and active military conscription in the United States eventually ended.

A separate survey conducted by Pew Research Center, a think tank based in Washington, found that approximately 21 percent of candidates running in the midterm elections have some degree of military experience.

The candidates have stated they have experience in either the Army and Army Reserves, or Army National Guard, the Navy and its reserves, the Air Force and its reserves, and the Marine Corps or Marine Corps Reserve. Others have served in the Coast Guard or as attorneys in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, or JAG, the military’s justice branch, according to the research center.

That same survey found that 49 percent of Americans and 53 percent of registered voters said they like political leaders who have served in the military.

Meanwhile, just 7 percent of U.S. adults and 5 percent of registered voters said they dislike leaders with military experience.

Grant Reeher, director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute at Syracuse University, told the Military Times that there are a number of reasons why both Democrats and Republicans champion military veteran candidates, such as the general public’s trust in the military, and their experience with government operations.

“And veterans lean more heavily towards Republicans than Democrats, relative to the rest of the population,” he said. “So it is tougher for Democrats to find veteran candidates. But in some ways, they’re recruiting veterans even harder than the Republicans are.”