As we near November’s midterm elections, television and online coverage seems flooded with political ads, reports on preliminaries, and a never-ending analysis of how results will impact our government after elections are over. Both political parties put themselves forward as the answer to the dysfunction of Washington politics.
A few of these ads are about veterans running for office, something that many believe needs to happen more as our political climate becomes more divided than ever. Veterans will tell you that the mission comes before anything else. This mentality is what we need in Washington—mission first. Mission before party. Mission before lobbyists. Mission before all else. And what is that mission? The welfare of the American people.
Among these veterans running for office stand a few female candidates worthy of attention. MJ Hegar in Texas, Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, and Amy McGrath in Kentucky are just a few making waves in primary elections and leading up to the general election in November. Others include Chrissy Houlahan in Pennsylvania, Elaine Luria in Virginia, Gina Ortiz Jones in Texas, Lynne Blankenbeker in New Hampshire, and Maura Sullivan in New Hampshire.
Today’s workplace is increasingly equal, although there is still a long way to go. Pay gaps between male and female employees and female representation among senior leadership still need improvement. The military is one of the last historically male-dominated professions.
But little girls today are overwhelmingly told that they can do anything, be anybody. I never questioned whether or not the military was a possible option for me as a woman, and women entering the service today have even more specialties available to them. Of course I faced some outdated ways of thinking during my military service, but the challenges I faced pale in comparison to the obstacles these ladies overcame to serve.
Air Force veteran MJ Hegar’s video ad went viral back in June. She starts by saying that her story is about doors, but it is so much more than that. The doors in her video represent the obstacles she has had to overcome, as she goes on to illustrate. The video highlights everything from the door of the helicopter she was flying when she was shot in Afghanistan to the doors she fruitlessly knocked on in Washington to get the combat exclusion policy for women reversed. Although frustrated with the political process of getting lawmakers to take action, Hegar was eventually able to celebrate the reversal of the combat exlusion law due to pressure from fighters like her.
“That meant opening, pushing, sometimes kicking through every door that was in my way,” Hegar said of pursuing her dream to become a pilot. It is this kind of attitude that makes these female veterans the perfect embodiment of women’s equality and political powerhouses.
CNN reported that her video had over 2 million views in only five days.
McGrath also had doors shut in her face and refused to let that stop her from becoming a fighter pilot. “When I was a young girl growing up in Kentucky, I dreamed of being a fighter pilot. Women couldn’t do that then, so I wrote my Congressman and he explained women were not allowed in combat roles,” she said in a piece on why she is running for office. “So I wrote every member of the armed services committee, and asked them to change the law.”
Kentucky House candidate Amy McGrath releases ad highlighting fight against corruption https://t.co/si5S4mSPFN via @CBSPolitics
— Amy McGrath (@AmyMcGrathKY) August 25, 2018
Across the board, these women point to their time in the military as a nonpartisan experience that influences how they interact with others and the values that they will bring to public office.
“As a Helicopter Aircraft Commander, I never asked if someone was a Republican or a Democrat before starting a mission. I knew we were all Americans and we all had the same mission,” Sherrill said on her website. “And my mission now is to bring that experience to Washington, to bring a different kind of leadership to Congress—leadership that will move this country forward and leaders who will listen to people and put their interests ahead of party.”
Many veterans, male and female, are running on this idea of mission before party. Super PAC With Honor emerged to help veterans seek political office. Their work in “electing next-generation veterans to create a more effective and less polarized government” goes hand-in-hand with the messages that many of these veterans bring in their campaigns.
Celebrating Women’s Equality Day over the weekend, I can’t help but reflect that these women have been pushing for gender equality for much more than just one day. They took action to reverse laws that discriminate against women. They started down difficult paths from the very beginning, even though they knew that it would be full of obstacles and naysayers who didn’t support them just because of their gender. But it never stopped them.
This kind of tenacity and drive is what veterans bring to public office. The drive to fix things that aren’t working is what these female veterans promise to bring, along with the ability to prioritize that work over party affiliation. Obstacles didn’t stop these women from pursuing a life of service. A “no” answer didn’t stop them from finding a way to serve their country. Deployments and combat injuries didn’t stop them from fighting for opportunities for women in the military. Obstacles won’t stop them from getting work done in Washington on behalf of their constituents.
