If the Guardian Fund has its way, the group will obtain its stated goal of shoring up national security by getting more veterans elected to Congress in 2016 — and more funds directed to the military.
“We hear a lot of criticism of ‘climate change deniers,’” Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, said at a breakfast in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. “But there are also a lot of ‘math deniers.' When it comes to budgeting for our defenses, there should be a bipartisan attitude to agree on the math.”
Davidson, a former U.S. Army Ranger, won the seat relinquished by former House Speaker John Boehner earlier this year in his first-ever run for office.
Only 80 out of 435 U.S. representatives and just 13 out of 100 U.S. senators have a military service background — another inconvenient fact the group hopes to change.
Numerous sitting House members who served in the military as well as candidates for the House and Senate this fall were featured at the group’s standing-room event in Washington’s Capitol Hill Club.
The three-year-old political action committee was founded by retired U.S. Army Col. and former Rep. Allen West, R.-Fla.
“We have the smallest army since 1939, the smallest Air Force since it was founded in 1947, and the smallest Navy since 1916,” said Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee and himself a retired colonel in the U.S. Army Reserves.
Wilson also pointed out those lawmakers who are veterans “will make the best decisions to protect families around the world.”
Davidson, Wilson and others all saluted West, who founded the group a year after he lost his Florida House seat in 2012. “We won 11 out of 14 races we got involved in in 2014 and that was pretty good,” said West, referring to placing veterans in office. “And we’re aiming for 16 out of 16 in ’16.”
Among those backed by the Guardian Fund who were present at the breakfast were retired Gen. Don Bacon, who is the GOP nominee in Nebraska’s 2nd District and retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Darryl Glenn, who won the Republican nomination to challenge Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo.
Two others backed by the group who emerged triumphant in hotly contested primaries in Florida were U.S. Army veteran and physician Neal Dunn, who captured the GOP nod in the 2nd District, and Brian Mast, a former U.S. Army staff sergeant and double amputee from combat in Afghanistan, who won the Republican primary in the 18th District.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax.
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