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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

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
July 29th, 2008 3:20pm
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Vote Vets to Air Anti-McCain Ad on GI Bill

The AP is reporting that Vote Vets will be running new anti-McCain ads that highlight his opposition to the new GI Bill:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats and their allies are ready to convert Sen. John McCain's stance on college aid for military veterans into a presidential campaign cause.

McCain, the all-but-nominated Republican presidential candidate, opposes a Democratic-backed bill that would significantly expand the breadth of education benefits for veterans, first adopted for those returning from World War II. Democrats want the proposal included in a war spending bill the Senate is scheduled to vote on this week.

Sen. Barack Obama, McCain's most likely general election opponent, already has raised objections to McCain's resistance. And on Tuesday, a veterans' group that has been critical of the war in Iraq is launching an ad in Washington to pressure McCain to change his mind.

By taking issue with McCain on the subject of veterans, Democrats hope to weaken one of his biggest assets — his personal biography as a former Navy pilot who became a prisoner of the North Vietnamese and endured torture at the hands of his captors.

Here's the ad:


You can read more about it on the VoteVets website. Lots of people are stepping up to rebrand McCain. Brave New Films is hitting McCain hard on Youtube. The DNC just launched the McCainpedia, and a few days ago Chris Bowers picked up on a point I've been making: McCain's savvy use of broadcast and cultural media (at least for a conservative). The campaign to redefine McCain is well underway.

May 20th, 2008 6:04pm
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