Both Republican Senator J.D. Vance (OH) and Democrat Governor Tim Walz (MN) served in the military during the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars, though neither saw combat. Their time in service and the way they have spoken about them since provides a potential way to differentiate the candidates.
J.D. Vance served in the Marine Corps for four years from 2003 to 2007 and was deployed to Iraq for six months as a military journalist. He earned the following awards: Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal, Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, Iraq Campaign Medal, Sea Service Deployment Ribbon, and “some conventional honors awarded during the Global War on Terror” according to Military.com.
In recent weeks, Wikipedia.com has scrubbed those awards from Sen. Vance’s page. The online encyclopedia has come under increased scrutiny this past year as investigative journalists point to its history of political bias.
Democrat surrogates for the Harris-Walz campaign have also repeatedly ignored or denigrated Vance’s service, such as when Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) stated, “I’m not aware of any military service that JD Vance has ever served” on CNN.
Vance is usually reticent about his time in the Marines. His official biography on his Senate website only mentions his service as an aside in mentioning when his grandmother passed away. His famous autobiography, Hillbilly Elegy, which was turned into a movie by Netflix, focuses more on the life lessons learned from his time in the Marines than detailed accounts of his time in Iraq. He even summarizes his service time by saying his “final two years in the Marines flew by and were largely uneventful.”
Meanwhile, Walz spent twenty-four years in the National Guard through 2005, though during the War in Afghanistan he did not deploy to a combat theater, instead serving in a support role from Italy.
Since he retired, Walz has embellished or allowed others to embellish his record in the military for decades according to reports.
In a speech in 2018, Walz promoted gun-control measures by proclaiming that he “carried weapons in war,” which the Harris campaign later admitted was a mistake.
His current biography as governor states that he retired as “Command Sergeant Major” but according to a National Guard spokesperson he “reverted to Master Sergeant on May 15th, 2005 [and] he retired the following day.”
Walz in 2006 allowed then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to commend his “service on the battlefield” without correction. During his Congressional career Walz shared articles that described him misleadingly as a veteran of Afghanistan, which he was not deployed to.
Walz has also been criticized by his former soldiers and fellow officers for the timing of his retirement, which occurred just before his unit deployed to combat operations.
J.D. Vance has criticized Tim Walz for these misstatements of his prior service over the past weeks.
