Mary Ellen Klas: Democrats are putting their faith in military veterans

Voters have lost faith in just about every institution right now - with the exception of the military, according to Gallup's annual survey. So Democrats, in their quest to win back a majority in the U.S. House, are recruiting military veterans. Their appeal boils down to one thing: courage. Voters want to see it. Few Republicans in Congress have been demonstrating it. And no one can deny veterans have it.

Alex Vindman, 50, is one of their recruits. The retired Army lieutenant colonel and Iraq war veteran is running against Florida Republican Senator Ashley Moody. Moody, the former state attorney general, was appointed by Governor Ron DeSantis last year to fill the seat vacated when Marco Rubio resigned to become secretary of state.

Vindman gained prominence in 2019 when he was a key witness in Trump's first impeachment trial, testifying that the president had leveraged military aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate former President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden.

After Trump was acquitted in a Senate trial, the president removed Vindman and his twin brother, Eugene, from their posts at the National Security Council. Alex Vindman retired from the Army, alleging that Trump had blocked his promotion. Eugene was elected to Congress.

A Senate race in Florida would usually be a long shot for any Democrat. The state has been reliably red for more than a decade. Trump carried it by 13 percentage points in 2024. Democrats have not won a Senate race in Florida since 2012.

But, based on recent polls, Vindman is gaining traction. In the first two months of his campaign, he's raised almost as much as Moody - $8.2 million - including some from registered Republicans. And a May survey of 2,000 likely voters conducted online by Change Research, a Democratic-aligned polling firm, shows Vindman narrowly ahead of Moody, with nonparty-affiliated voters breaking toward him.

Vindman's integrity was tested when he sacrificed his career to testify before Congress about Trump's call with the newly elected president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump's allies immediately questioned his loyalty: He is a Jewish refugee who was born in Ukraine and speaks Russian, they said, implicitly suggesting that he wasn't really a loyal American.

But Vindman isn't an outsider; he is a U.S. citizen who won a Purple Heart and was subjected to presidential attacks and death threats for standing up for democracy. He once told an interviewer that "the Ukraine scandal and testimony was more difficult than combat in Iraq," but that it would have been even harder if he had remained silent.

Vindman moved to Florida in 2023 "because my wife wanted to get away from politics," he told me. But when Trump was reelected the following year, he decided he "couldn't sit on the sidelines."

"There were some tense moments in my conversations with my wife about running for office," he said. "I would be putting our family back in the crosshairs - because we will absolutely be a top target for this administration and on their enemies list. But the urgency of this moment, and the direction that this country and the state are headed, necessitates action."

The president's self dealing has corrupted the office. His obsession with building monuments all over DC, targeting political opponents and silencing dissent have distorted his ability to focus on helping Americans. So far, most Republicans in Congress have gone along with him.

There are 98 military veterans who are members of Congress, according to Military Times. Only 28 are Democrats. But it's been mostly Democrats who have called out the president as he has run roughshod over the Constitution, illegally deployed troops into U.S. cities, ordered the assassination of alleged drug smugglers at sea and refused to consult Congress about his misguided war in Iran.

Voters are yearning for a moral reset in Washington, said Max Rose, an Army veteran, former congressman, and senior adviser to VoteVets, a political action committee that recruits and supports Democratic veterans running for office.

Veterans are more likely "to put our shared values first rather than play politics as usual - and that's what the American people are hungry for right now," he told me. They can meet the moment because they have faced risk, handled complex challenges, worked as a team and "can be part of something much bigger than yourself."

VoteVets has endorsed 33 veterans for Congress and 7 for Senate this year. It's the largest class of veteran congressional candidates since 2018, when Democrats gained 41 seats in the midterm elections, Rose told me.

The roster of recruits includes two retired brigadier generals as well as a Marine captain, a director of counterterrorism, a Navy SEAL, a NASA chief of staff, a National Security Council senior director, an Air Force surgeon and a three-star admiral. It's hard to look at this list and not get a sense that, if they succeed, the cavalry may be coming to Washington.

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This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.

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This story was originally published May 27, 2026 at 8:03 AM.