Maryland Governor Wes Moore joins Morning Joe to discuss being is one of the military veterans featured in a new book profiling vets and a former FBI agent, a mix of Democrats and Republicans, about bringing their commitment to service from the battlefield into public life. The new book, “Courage Can Save US: Ten Extraordinary Americans and the Fight for Our Future” explores how this bipartisan generation of leaders is working across party lines to shape our nation. The book’s author, U.S. Marine Corp veteran Rye Barcott also joins the conversation.
More women veterans running for Congress this year
More women, Democratic veterans running for Congress this year
The number of veterans running for federal office this cycle is up 47 percent from 2024.
The number of Democratic and women veterans running for federal office this year is at record levels as the overall number of congressional candidates with military backgrounds has surged from 2024, according to a new analysis ahead of the midterm elections.
The numbers, compiled by the non-partisan veterans advocacy group With Honor, show broader engagement by younger veterans in national politics and a significant shift in campaign dynamics, where previously veteran candidates have skewed heavily Republican.
The increased involvement comes as Congress wrestles with a series of national security issues that could decide the November midterm elections, including President Donald Trump’s war against Iran, the continued U.S. military assault on suspected drug smugglers in the Caribbean, and the administration’s increasingly fraught relationship with NATO allies.
“Both parties have emphasized recruiting veterans in recent cycles, but it’s really showing this year,” said Rye Barcott, co-founder and CEO of With Honor. “And as the country faces significant division and challenges, veterans are hearing that call to service again.”
Foreign policy issues typically don’t move voters as significantly as domestic and economic topics in midterm elections. But the connection between some of Trump’s overseas moves — particularly the impact of the conflict with Iran on energy prices — could change that sentiment this cycle.
With Honor is tracking 752 veterans registered to run for the House and Senate this year, the highest number since they began tracking in 2018. That total is up 47 percent from 2024 and up 20 percent from 2018, midway through Trump’s first term in office.
Democratic leaders during that 2018 cycle made a concerted effort to highlight veterans and national security voices on the campaign trail, including individuals like former New Jersey Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a one-time Navy helicopter pilot.
But they are seeing even higher numbers this year. At least 294 veterans are running for Congress as party members, up nearly 30 percent from the 2018 cycle. Roughly 39 percent of candidates running in midterm contests are registered Democrats, the highest percentage since With Honor began tracking the numbers.
A Democratic strategist who has advised the party on veterans issues, granted anonymity to discuss the party’s strategy, said the effort to bring more left-leaning veterans’ voices onto the campaign trail has been stepped up in recent months amid President Donald Trump’s military moves.
“No one understands the cost of war better than veterans, and so I think you’re seeing them get off the sidelines now,” the strategist said. Party leaders hope to use that veteran clout to help emphasize the long-term costs of the war with Iran and the uncertainty of future conflicts in locations like Cuba, South America and even Greenland.
Another reason for the jump in Democratic veteran candidates is the emergence of more women with military backgrounds running for office.
With Honor researchers identified 95 women with military backgrounds who are running for House and Senate seats this year, up from 40 in 2024. Of those, 56 percent are Democrats, and only 28 percent Republicans.
Only eight women veterans are serving in Congress today: three Democrats and five Republicans. The surge in female candidates could push that number to a new record high next year.
Republicans still make up almost half of all veteran candidates, at 48 percent. At the start of the current session of Congress, only 72 of the 100 veterans in the House and Senate were members of the GOP.
The veterans included among the 752 names are a mix of well-known incumbents running for reelection — individuals like Reps. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) and Jason Crow (D-Colo.) — and congressional hopefuls like Marine Corps veteran Graham Platner, running as a Democrat for Senate in Maine.
Barcott, who recently authored the book “Courage Can Save US” profiling veterans serving in national office today, said he believes the emergence of more post-9/11 veterans in prominent political roles is also driving the rise in veteran engagement.
“You look at veterans like [Maryland Gov.] Wes Moore and Vice President JD Vance, Mikie Sherrill, that shows folks what you can achieve,” he said.
About 41 percent of the 752 veterans running for office this year served after September 2001, making them the largest generation of veterans on the campaign trail. About one third of veterans serving in Congress now were in the military during that period.
The larger number of veterans running for office doesn’t guarantee an increase in the number of candidates with military backgrounds who are elected to office.
The number of veterans in Congress peaked in 1969, following years of mandatory military service for young American men in the Vietnam War. That year 402 veterans — 75 percent of the House and Senate membership — boasted some prior military service.
The number has slowly decreased since then, according to congressional records. The total hasn’t been above 20 percent since 2009. But that number still is over-represented for the American public, where about 6 percent of the adult population has served.
This article ran as an exclusive in POLITICO by author Leo Shane III. Read the press release from the Associated Press here.
The Courage Crisis in Congress | Rye Barcott
Rye Barcott joins Rep. Crenshaw for a candid conversation about Crenshaw’s recent primary election loss, the pressures facing members of Congress, the rise of social media-driven politics, the tension between effective governance and outrage-driven politics, and why courage remains one of the most important – and increasingly rare – qualities in American leadership.
Rye Barcott on Cuomo Mornings on Courage Can Save US
Opinion: Tilling Honor in a Political Landscape Barren of It
With JD Vance as vice president and Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, now probably isn’t the best time to argue for more veterans in public service.
But Rye Barcott wants to make the case anyway. It’s a persuasive one.
He points out that as a general rule, Americans who’ve served in the military have forged bonds with and learned to respect people from diverse backgrounds and different places. The uniform can unite those who wear it as much as anything else divides them.
Broadly speaking, they have had certain positive values, such as discipline and teamwork, drilled into them.
“There’s also a degree of humility that military service instills,” Barcott, a 47-year-old former Marine, told me during a two-hour conversation in North Carolina, where we both live, just over a week ago. “You have served something that is larger than yourself.” And you’ve done that, he added, at potential risk, having accepted the idea that the public good may demand personal sacrifice.
Imagine America if more politicians genuinely endorsed and acted on that principle.
Barcott has written a thoughtful, hopeful book, “Courage Can Save US: Ten Extraordinary Americans and the Fight for Our Future,” that’s being published this week. It profiles current office holders — half of them Democrats, half of them Republicans — and suggests that qualities honed in the military (or, in one congressman’s case, the F.B.I.) positioned them to be less partisan, more independent, more civic-minded leaders.
The book also reflects Barcott’s passion project. He’s the chief executive officer and one of the founders of With Honor, a nonpartisan group that, since 2018, has encouraged more men and women who’ve worn the uniform or performed similar government service — such as defense, law enforcement or intelligence work — to run for political office. To date, With Honor has supported more than 250 such candidates with more than $100 million across federal, state and local races. Those candidates must first sign a pledge to conduct themselves with civility, integrity and the courage to work across party lines.
I was curious about Barcott’s perspective because we need more politicians with less vanity, less stridency, less pettiness. We need valor in a political landscape often barren of it. If recruiting a greater number of veterans improves the odds of getting that, I’m for it.
It might. I don’t think there’s any definitive proof, but there’s this: On Wednesday, four House Republicans mustered the moxie to break party ranks and voted to direct President Trump to get congressional approval for the sustained engagement of American combat troops with Iran. Two of those Republicans, Tom Barrett of Michigan and Warren Davidson of Ohio, each served in the military for more than a decade. A third, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, is the former F.B.I. agent in Barcott’s book; his work for the bureau included counterterrorism operations abroad. (The fourth dissident was Thomas Massie of Kentucky.)
Barcott’s nine profile subjects in addition to Fitzpatrick are the Democratic governors Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey and Wes Moore of Maryland; the Republican House members John James of Michigan, Don Bacon of Nebraska and Dan Crenshaw of Texas; the Democratic House members Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Jared Golden of Maine; Senator Mark Kelly, Democrat of Arizona; and Senator Todd Young, Republican of Indiana.
There are flaws, failures and disappointments aplenty among those politicians. But there’s also evidence of conscience and of openness to contrary views. In aggregate, they’re a more impressive bunch than any random selection of 10 elected officials.
Although Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, has voted in line with President Trump since his return to the White House in January 2025, he publicly condemned him in early 2021 for his incendiary and bogus claims about a stolen election, and he’s known for his willingness to tangle with fellow Republicans. This year, Trump refused to endorse Crenshaw’s re-election bid, and Crenshaw lost his primary three months ago to a far-right challenger.
Bacon, a former Air Force brigadier general who represents a district that voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and Kamala Harris in 2024, has a bolder reputation than Crenshaw’s for statements that challenge other Republicans, including Trump. “He’s taken a stance on stuff like the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico,” Barcott said. “He was the only Republican to vote against that. He basically said it was a silly idea.”
The exact word Bacon used was “juvenile.” Candor like that has earned him harassment and threats; at one point, Bacon’s wife slept with a loaded gun within reach. He announced last year that he would leave the House at the end of this term, his fifth.
On the Democratic side, Moulton, a former Marine, sometimes quarreled with the Biden administration and has pointedly questioned Democratic orthodoxy. Kelly, a retired astronaut and naval officer, has also broken with his party at times but, more notably, drew threats from Hegseth of a court-martial, a demotion in rank and a reduction in retirement pay for participating in a 2025 video that reminded troops that they had not only the right but also the duty to disobey illegal orders.
Not all veterans who run for office are interested in flexing political independence or in taking With Honor’s pledge, much as the impulse to join the military is, for some people, less altruistic than self-aggrandizing, less philosophical than practical, less patriotic than jingoistic. Veterans aren’t axiomatically virtuous and valorous. And some have a take on military culture that’s exclusionary, discriminatory, censorious. Hegseth, a bellicose theocrat, has gone out of his way to marginalize Black and female officers.
“Military service also leaves some pretty deep scars,” Barcott said. “Mental health issues are pretty significant across the military.” That’s how Graham Platner, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the crucial U.S. Senate race in Maine, has explained disturbing social media posts and other ugly behavior in his past, though he says that he is now in much better shape, and his admirers emphasize that he stepped up to serve his country and put himself in harm’s way in the first place.
The prevalence of veterans in Congress has declined significantly over the past half century, during which Americans’ respect for Congress has also plummeted. In the mid-1970s, about 75 percent of senators and House members had served in the military. Now, it’s just under 20 percent.
From George Washington through George H.W. Bush, the overwhelming majority of our presidents were veterans. But since then, it’s the opposite.
Some potential contenders for the presidency in 2028 are veterans. On the Republican side, there’s Vance, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas and, if the stench of his 2024 humiliation fades sufficiently, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Among Democrats, there’s Kelly, Moore, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona and — if you count C.I.A. and Defense Department work — Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan.
I realize there’s only one woman on that list, just as there’s only one woman in Barcott’s book, and that’s another reason not to give too many political bonus points to veterans who run for office. Given the composition of our military, veterans are more likely to be male than female, and I don’t think we’d benefit at all from fewer women in Congress and statehouses.
But I’m inspired by many of the veterans in politics with whom I’ve interacted. I think of Senator Tammy Duckworth, Democrat of Illinois, whom I once pitched as Biden’s ideal 2020 running mate. I think of Bob Kerrey, who was the governor of Nebraska and later represented the state in the Senate. I’ve written about his early and honorable advocacy for gay marriage.
They, like many other veterans, tempered individual ambition with a sense of common mission. I spotted the military’s fingerprints in that. And I liked what I saw.
This op-ed was originally published by The New York Times. Read it here.