Voters may end up shifting power from one establishment institution to another in November.
In 2016, voters are fed up with career politicians. This year, both Democratic and Republican congressional candidates are striving to cast themselves in opposition to the Washington establishment.
Ironically, the majority of “outsider” candidates on the ballot in November will have a background in the military, which falls within the long list of government institutions that are the very core of the “establishment.”
With most states having completed their congressional primaries, the success of veterans running outsider campaigns against entrenched incumbents is startling. In fact, 37 of the 72 House candidates nationwide who are espousing an anti-establishment campaign heading into the general election have a military or law-enforcement background, no political experience, and an anti-establishment message.
It’s not hard to explain this apparent contradiction: According to a Gallup poll from June, 73 percent of people have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the military, while a mere 6 percent have any confidence in Congress. It seems that not every establishment institution is feeling the public’s wrath.
In the aftermath of his primary victory against Wisconsin state senator Frank Lasee in the Badger State’s eighth congressional district, Republican candidate Mike Gallagher told National Review that “people are now profoundly concerned with the threat of radical Islam in particular, but also the rising threats in general.” The fear of crime, particularly terrorism, has led the public to look for military and law-enforcement experience in its House candidates. “People don’t feel safe anymore, not even in northeastern Wisconsin,” Gallagher said.
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In Michigan’s first congressional district, anti-establishment Republican Jack Bergman is currently leading the chairman of the Michigan Democratic party in the polls, according to the Cook Political Report. Bergman’s campaign slogan is simple: “If you want change in Washington, send a Marine. I’ll get the job done!”
All across the nation, veterans are staging anti-establishment campaigns. Typical messages include: “We must break the Washington cartel this year”; “I’m not a politician and I am certainly not a career politician”; “I have been a successful doctor, veteran, businessman, and lawyer. I am not a politician, nor do I want to be”; and “Make the decision to join the fight to take back Congress from the career politicians!”
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The success of such rhetoric has led other, more-established candidates to hop on the bandwagon.
Fran Person, the Democratic nominee in South Carolina’s fifth congressional district, played a critical role in Washington from 2009 to 2014 as the special assistant to Vice President Joe Biden. But you wouldn’t know it from Person’s website, which traffics heavily in anti-establishment slogans: “Fran is running for Congress because Congress is broken. Members of Congress spend more time fighting with one another and scoring political points than working for us. That’s never going to work.”
#related#Jim Mowrer, the Democratic nominee in Iowa’s third district, doesn’t hide his achievements, including becoming Biden’s veterans’ director and serving as a Pentagon appointee under President Obama. But like Person, Mowrer attempts to create the perception that he is an outsider: “We need a congressman who will put the priorities of Iowans ahead of the Washington Insiders and party politics.”
As the veteran-led anti-establishment movement continues to garner support on both sides of the aisle, it seems that November’s elections might usher in a slate of “outsider” candidates who shift power from one facet of the establishment to another.
— Austin Yack is a William F. Buckley Fellow in Political Journalism at the National Review Institute.