Vote Vets Launches Emerging Leaders Program

I'm mostly still off the grid but had to pop back in to share this with you. Vote Vets just announced the launch of an Emerging Leaders program to help (mostly) young veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan get elected to state and local office in a bid to build the Democratic foreign policy bench. Add this to the growing roster of organizations that help train new, young candidates for public office.

Here's what they had to say:

[W]e learned very quickly that the key to building a long-term, progressive cadre of national leaders with on-the-ground foreign policy experience is to have a "deep bench" as they say in sports. In order to win House and Senate seats for years to come, we have to be able to put up candidates that have years of political experience under their belts. And as we've seen over the past two, just being an Iraq vet doesn't cut it in the hyper-competitive world of Washington politics.

That's why we've devised a "farm team" of progressive candidates with hands-on national security experience. We've created a program for like-minded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans called Emerging Leaders. In this program, we recruit vets with little to no political experience and promote them in state and local races. We've also incorporated a number of Iraq and Afghanistan who have already won state and local races in the past few years. The idea is to develop seasoned leaders who are more than capable of not only running for federal office in the coming years (should they choose to), but of winning. By cultivating their political careers at the earliest stages, we'll help them to become U.S. senators and members of Congress down the road.

These veterans will eventually become the answer to the McCains, Grahams, and Liebermans of the world when it comes to the question of whether or not to start a war.

Here's the inaugural class:

New Candidates

• Stephen Webber: Iraq Vet - Running for Missouri State House
• Jason Kander: Afghanistan Vet - Running for Missouri State House
• Miranda Norman: Iraq Vet - Running for Oklahoma State House
• Richard Riggs: Iraq Vet - Running for Oregon State House
• Donald Bortz: Iraq Vet - Running for Oakland County (Michigan) Commissioner
• Alex Cornell du Houx: Iraq Vet - Running for Maine State House
• Glenn Ray: Iraq Vet - Running for Arizona State House
• Allan Branstiter: Iraq Vet - Running for North Dakota State Senate

Elected Officials

• Harold Naughton: Iraq Vet - Running for re-election to the Massachusetts State House
• Joe Rice: Iraq Vet - Running for re-election to the Colorado State House
• Allen Vaught: Iraq Vet - Running for re-election to the Texas State House
• McKinley Bailey: Iraq and Afghanistan Vet - Running for re-election to the Iowa State House
• Steven Fulop: Iraq Vet - Jersey City, New Jersey City Councilman
• Steve Hobbs: Iraq Vet, Washington State Senator