US veterans, including many women, seek to serve anew in Congress

GEORGETOWN(US): America's military veterans are taking the leap from battlefield to ballot in large numbers in 2018, aiming to bring their discipline, can-do problem-solving, and country-before-party sense of duty to Congress.

Washington may well need them. The US Senate and House of Representatives are gridlocked, Donald Trump's presidency has deepened the partisan divide, and approval ratings for Congress hover at just 19 per cent.

Veterans, mostly men, have long served in Congress but their percentage has plunged, from a high of more than 70 per cent in the early 1970s to about 20 per cent today.

Some 200 military veterans are running in the November 6 midterm elections, including a record number of women Democrats intent on being a check against Trump.

They were soldiers, sailors, barrier-busting female fighter

pilots, paratroopers and intelligence analysts.

Many came of age after 9/11, volunteering to serve in Afghanistan or Iraq. They are Democrats seeking to flip districts in deep state Texas, like retired search and rescue pilot MJ Hegar; and Republicans running to make inroads in liberal California, like US Marine

combat veteran Andrew Grant.

The common theme that runs through their campaigns? A commitment to serve.

"Rescue forces tend to run to where the fire is, and I think that right now the fire is in (Washington) DC," Hegar, who received the Purple Heart after being shot down during a Medevac mission in Afghanistan in 2009, said at a campaign event in Georgetown, Texas.

Hegar, 42, successfully sued the Pentagon in 2012 to lift a ban on women serving in combat positions. She said she would like to see a "wave" of veterans run for Congress.

"I think that toughness is a Texas values. Service to your country is a very Texas value," she said. "We're a very military state." There are a few women combat veterans on Capitol Hill, including Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, who lost her legs in a helicopter crash in Iraq, and Arizona Republican congresswoman Martha Mcsally, a former fighter pilot running for US Senate.

Changes appear likely. Many of the women who entered the military in the 1990s, when some combat roles began to open up for female recruits, have retired, and are now eyeing seats in Congress.