Texas vets dwindling in Congress

Military advocates hope to draw new participants into political arena

With the number of Texas veterans in Congress at a nearly 100-year low, Republican Dan Crenshaw is taking on a new kind of mission.

Crenshaw, a retired Navy SEAL who nearly died fighting in Afghanistan, is part of a nationwide effort organized by former soldiers from all branches to get more veterans to enter the political arena and shore up their dwindling numbers on Capitol Hill.

“Veteran participation is at an all-time low,” warns Alex Johnson, political director of With Honor, a bipartisan group that started last year to confront that reality and help former soldiers run for office.

The numbers are striking. In the 1970s, between 70 percent and 80 percent — as many as 4-in-5 — of the 435 members of the U.S. House and 100 members of the U.S. Senate were veterans, according to the Congressional Research Office.

Today, less than 19 percent — fewer than 1-in-5 — of members are veterans.

The Texas delegation

falls into line. In 1971, 16 of the state’s 23 members of Congress were veterans, giving them a personal relationship with the nation’s military community and its outsized presence in the Lone Star State. Now, even though Texas’ congressional delegation has grown to 36, only six members from Texas have any history of serving in the military, and two of those have already announced their retirement.

With only four veterans seeking re-election, Texas could end up with its lowest percentage of veterans in Congress since before the end of World War I, unless more veterans replace them in November. Before the 1916 election, not one of Texas’s then-18member delegation had military experience. But two military veterans and a third man who enlisted at the end of World War I but never went overseas were elected that year.

Texas military presence

The decline in Texas veterans in Congress is particularly notable because of the military presence in the state. Texas has 15 active duty military bases and almost 220,000 soldiers deployed to the state, including active duty and reserves. Only California with 251,000 deployments has more. Texas also has almost 1.6 million veterans — more than all but California, which has more than 1.8 million.

Fewer veterans has real public policy implications, said Seth Lynn, the founder of Veterans Campaign, which holds regular seminars to help veterans running for office and preparing for public service.

Not only do veterans bring first-hand knowledge on military and veterans experiences, but studies have shown they are typically more aggressive in challenging presidential administrations on national defense issues, no matter which party is in the White House, Lynn said.

“They tend to ask more questions and are slower to commit forces,” Lynn said, who is also administrative director of the University of San Francisco’s public leadership master’s program.

It’s because of those tendencies that the declining number of veterans risks making Congress a tamer check-and-balance to presidential administrations on military issues, Colgate University’s Danielle Lupton has argued in research published in the Washington Post.

The Houston area currently has half of the state’s veterans in Congress. Rep. Brian Babin, RWoodville, served in the Air Force from 1975 to 1979; Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, was in the Navy from 1988 to 1997, then was in the reserves until 2009; and Rep. Ted Poe, R-Atascocita, was in the Air Force Reserves from 1970 to 1976.

But Poe, who represents more than 750,000 people in Harris County, announced he is not running again for the 2nd Congressional District. Crenshaw and state Rep. Kevin Roberts are in a GOP primary run off election to determine who will be the Republican nomine to replace Poe. Whoever wins that primary on May 22 will face Democrat Todd Litton in November.

Crenshaw has made his time in the Navy a key focal point of his campaign, stressing it taught him valuable skills that translate well to politics.

“I know what it means to fight, I know what it means to lead,” Crenshaw said, a statement he repeats often on the campaign circuit.

His story has prompted veterans groups and other veterans in Congress to come to his aid.

The With Honor group’s political action committee donated $1,700 to Crenshaw’s campaign in March, and has given him a total of $2,200 since he entered the race. And SEAL PAC, a political committee run by Interior Secretary and retired SEAL Ryan Zinke, a former Montana Congressman, sent Crenshaw a $5,000 check.

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, RSouth Carolina, an Air Force veteran, used a political committee he runs — Fund for America’s Future — to give Crenshaw’s campaign $1,000 just weeks after Crenshaw got in the race. And U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Arkansas, an Army veteran who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, gave Crenshaw his most highprofile endorsement.

Olson, who was elected to Congress in 2008, said there is a camaraderie with veterans in Congress because there are so few. He said veterans bring an ability to work with people from all backgrounds.

“You start out all divided but you become a team,” Olson said.

SEAL: A special brand

But while many veterans are coming to Crenshaw’s side, not all veterans are applauding SEALs like him turning to politics, with some former SEALs criticizing veterans for running on the SEAL brand.

Lt. Forrest S. Crowell, a SEAL, stirred the issue with a widely publicized master’s thesis for the Naval Postgraduate School in which he questioned whether seeking public office was counter to the core of the SEAL ethos. Besides Zinke and Taylor, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, is among the SEALs who have won high-profile offices recently.

“SEALs should realize the danger in using organizational credibility to engage in partisan politics,” he wrote. “There is currently no commonly agreed upon line between what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior post active duty service, but the use of the SEAL brand as a political weapon or as a marketing tool is at clear odds with the SEAL Ethos.”

Crenshaw, for his part, does not appear in his military uniform in ads or mailers. He does wear the SEALs signature trident on his lapel and almost always talks about his service on radio programs or during frequent appearances on Fox News programs.

Crenshaw said he hasn’t read Crowell’s report, but said he doesn’t think SEALs running for office should be considered in the same realm as those who are writing books and in movies. He said there are just a handful of SEALs in politics, and said their international experience can make them valuable assets in public meetings and hearings.

Crenshaw, 35, grew up in the Katy area. He says he became enamored with the Navy SEALs as a young boy.

After graduating from Tufts University, Crenshaw went into SEAL training in 2006 and was deployed in Iraq with SEAL Team 3 twice. In 2012, however, while deployed in Afghanistan, an Afghan interpreter stepped on an improvised explosive device that instantly dismembered him and blinded Crenshaw.

“I never thought I was going to see again,” Crenshaw told a hushed group of Houston Young Republicans last month.

Doctors were able to restore his vision for his left eye, but Crenshaw now has a glass eye for his right eye and often wears an eye patch. One of his glass eyes has the SEAL trident symbol on it.

Crenshaw said his experiences give him an intimate relationship with what it means to deploy the U.S. military anywhere in the world. That is part of his selling point to voters.

“Nobody knows the horrors of war better than I do,” Crenshaw told the Cherry Tree Republican Club. “I’ve lost a lot of friends and I’ve been to a lot of funerals.”

The decline in the number of Texas veterans in Congress was never part of Crenshaw’s reasons for running, he said. Instead, after his military career ended, he was left trying to find a role that would similarly allow him to offer public service.

“It was hard to leave the military,” he said.

Taking on a hero

For his part, Roberts has delicately tried to handle criticizing Crenshaw as the two battle it out in a highly contested primary battle without making it sound like he’s disrespectful of a veteran. During a candidate forum sponsored by the Cherry Hill Republican Club, Roberts made sure to praise Crenshaw’s service first, and then questioned his policy positions.

“I respect Dan greatly and appreciate his selfless service,” Roberts said, before sparring over policy issues.

He acknowledged that Crenshaw is an American hero, but said he’s going to continue to present himself as a guy who knows the community better than his foe and has more experience in the public policy arena, having served two years as a state legislator.

Roberts is not a veteran, but notes that his campaign is getting support from local veterans, including Gene Birdwell, founder of Camp Hope in the Houston area, which provides housing to wounded warriors.

Veterans with political experience say candidates running for office have to be careful not to think their time in uniform will be enough to get them in office. Lynn said candidates who overplay their military experience risk pigeonholing themselves.

“It then becomes less about what the constituents want and need,” Lynn said.

Crenshaw has company on the ballot in Texas. In Collin County, state Sen. Van Taylor, a Marine Corps veteran, won the GOP nomination in the 3rd Congressional District. In San Antonio, Democrat Gina Ortiz Jones is an Air Force veteran running in the 23rd Congressional District and faces a primary run-off election on May 22.