In battle for U.S. House, Democrats are calling up military recruits

NEW YORK — The Democratic Party is turning to an unusually large crop of military veterans in an effort to flip the House in 2026, recruiting and promoting veterans in some of the top battleground districts in a reprisal of a strategy that helped deliver the House in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term.

But this time the push for veterans is being embraced to a greater extent by a party establishment keenly aware of the urgent need for Democratic challengers to create distance from a national party brand that remains deeply unpopular.

“We can’t just have people who seem like tired old Democrats,” said Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., a former Marine who has been involved in recruiting veteran candidates in recent years.

To retake the House, Democrats must flip at least three seats in 2026, and veterans are running in at least triple that many swing districts — including in Colorado, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nebraska, New York and Virginia. Some Democratic officials are in talks with or tracking more than 30 potentially new Democratic veteran candidates for the House.

Democratic political strategists say veterans can be especially effective in trying to stretch the map deeper into rural and Republican-leaning territory.

Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, a former Army Ranger who is helping to oversee candidate recruitment for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said veterans tend to make particularly effective candidates because their oath to put the country first still means something to voters.

“What Americans are really thirsty for right now are leaders, not just politicians,” Crow said.

Mike Marinella, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, noted that seven of the Republican incumbents in the most competitive seats are veterans themselves.

Travis Tazelaar, the political director of VoteVets, which recruits Democratic veteran candidates and runs ads supporting them, said veterans had a crucial advantage: Voters tend to presume they are politically moderate.

“The average voter looks at a veteran and doesn’t see them as a hard conservative right or a hard liberal left,” Tazelaar said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.