With anger spreading over Iran war, Democrats hope to flip Republican
seats with veterans' help
[October 15, 2026]
By NICHOLAS RICCARDI and SARAH RANKIN
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — The doorbell chimed “The Star Spangled
Banner” as retired Col. Lou Christensen stepped inside the large house
on the northeastern edge of Colorado Springs. The registered Republican
and 28-year Air Force veteran was doing something he never expected to
do — attending a party for a Democratic congressional candidate.
“The legislative branch needs to put up guardrails from President
Trump,” said Christensen, 70. “We need another branch of government that
stands up and says, ‘Uh, boss, that’s not constitutional.'”
Christensen is backing Jessica Killin, a fellow veteran, over first-term
Republican Rep. Jeff Crank in Colorado's 5th Congressional District, a
conservative stronghold that includes five military facilities. The
district is a longshot for Democrats but they're investing money here
for the first time in years, counting on an unpopular war with Iran and
upheaval in the armed forces to put more seats in play as the party
pushes for control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Democratic
candidates who previously served in the military are also running in
Florida, South Carolina and Virginia districts with significant veteran
populations.
Although veterans hold all sorts of political beliefs, the population
overall leans right — nearly 6 in 10 voted for Trump two years ago,
according to AP VoteCast. Trump won Colorado's 5th by 9 percentage
points that year, and nearly one out of every nine people there is a
veteran, according to federal statistics, making it one of the most
veteran-heavy seats in the country. The district is home to NORAD, Fort
Carson and the Air Force Academy.
“I know there's a bunch of veterans in the room, so I don't have to tell
you where we are with foreign policy,” Killin told more than two dozen
voters who gathered on a recent Friday evening. “For the first time in
history, now the global community thinks more of China than of the
United States.”
Iran war, Hegseth unsettle some veterans
One of the only comparable seats in terms of veteran population is in
Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District, centered in Virginia Beach and
similarly dotted with military bases, with the massive Naval Station
Norfolk just outside its boundaries.
Unlike Colorado's 5th, elections in Virginia's 2nd have zig-zagged back
and forth over the last decade. Democrat Elaine Luria, a retired Naval
Commander who deployed to the Middle East and Western Pacific and led a
unit of 400 sailors over the course of her military career, ousted a
Republican incumbent in 2018. She held the seat for two terms before
Republican Jen Kiggans, a former Navy helicopter pilot, defeated her in
2022.
Now Luria is back for a rematch, hammering Kiggans and Trump for the
Iran war that she called “an expanding economic crisis” as well as a
geopolitical blunder. In an interview, she criticized Kiggans for voting
against resolutions intended to halt military action without
congressional approval.
Kiggans, whose 10 years of service included two deployments to the
Persian Gulf, said she hopes the war can soon be brought to a close. But
she argued that Luria, through her criticism, has “chosen the side of
Iran.”
“It’s like the Democrats are now siding with the Iranians and not
standing with our military,” she said in an interview.
Paul Krekorian, a Navy veteran and retired grade school teacher in
Virginia Beach, said he worries the war may become a “quagmire” for
Trump. But he still decided to support Kiggans because Democrats “have
gone socialist.”
Still, plenty of veterans were casting early ballots for Luria, citing
their frustration at Trump and his administration.
“I think we are less safe, not just because of the war in Iran, but
because of the leadership or the lack of leadership we have," said
Phyllis Mihalas, a self-described independent and retired Army
lieutenant colonel. She described Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as
"an enormously incompetent man whose ego consistently gets in the way.”
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Former Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., stands in a group photo with
members of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1177 on July 9, 2026,
in Norfolk, Va. (AP Photo/Kendall Warner, File)
Democrats bet on veteran candidates
Democratic veterans are trying to make that argument in other races
for Republican-held seats. In South Carolina's 1st Congressional
District, Democrat Nancy Lacore, a former Navy vice admiral, is
running against Republican lawyer Jennifer Honeycutt. Lacore was
fired by Hegseth last year.
In Florida's 13th Congressional District, retired Army Brigadier
Gen. Leela Gray is challenging Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna.
And in Florida's 7th Congressional District, Bale Dalton, a former
Navy Aviator and NASA chief of staff, is running against Ryan
Elijah, a Republican and local news anchor.
In Colorado Springs, the Republican incumbent, Crank, is in his
first term in Congress. Though his father and father-in-law are
veterans and his son-in-law is currently in the Army, Crank has
never been in the military.
A onetime aide to a longtime congressman representing the area,
Crank ran the Colorado chapter of the conservative group Americans
For Prosperity and then served as Colorado chairman of former South
Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley's bid for the Republican presidential
nomination in 2024. He ran for the open congressional seat against a
Trump-backed candidate and won the Republican primary, sparking some
suspicion among Trump supporters about whether he'd be a team player
for the president.
Now Killin's campaign is airing an ad slamming Crank for voting with
Trump “100% of the time.”
In an interview, Crank scoffed at the charge but said it wasn't his
style to pick public fights with Trump. “I'm going to try to check
the president where I think he's wrong,” Crank said, such as Trump
moving U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Alabama.
'Don't let it be for nothing'
Crank said that one of the first casualties from the Iran war was
stationed at Ft. Carson in Colorado Springs, and it fell to him to
call the fallen soldier's father. “He basically said to me, 'Don't
let it be for nothing,'” Crank said. He added: “We're reluctant to
go, but once we're there, let's get the job done and go home. And I
think that's how people in my district feel.”
Mike Gould, a retired lieutenant general who once ran the Air Force
Academy, agreed. “What our president did, taking on Iran the way he
did, was exactly the right thing to do,” said Gould, who supports
Crank.
Killin grew up in Colorado Springs and quips that she was the lone
Democrat in her elementary school class. She joined the Army in the
late 1990s and rose to captain, serving in the Balkan war before
joining USAA, the company that provides insurance and banking
services to members of the military and veterans.
At the house party, Killin said she was worried about what Trump had
done to the country — and that Crank wasn't trying to stop it. “I
grew up in an era where the Department of Defense was apolitical and
the Department of Justice was apolitical,” Killin said.
It was a theme that many other veterans sounded during the
gathering, which was held in the home of an Air Force veteran and
former Reagan administration official just a few miles from the Air
Force Academy. One former Army Ranger worried about Hegseth's
attempts to infuse the military with conservative Christian cultural
ideas. A newly discharged veteran worried about how he'll find work.
And Michael Stewart, a 75-year-old former Marine, made a confession
about the level of his disgust over the Iran war.
“This is the first time,” Stewart said, “I've wanted to see my
country lose.”
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Rankin reported from Virginia Beach, Virginia.
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