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 Sen. Ashley Moody. Moody, the former state attorney general, was appointed by Gov. 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 Trump had blocked his promotion. Eugene was elected to Congress.
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 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.
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.”