'I'm not going to stand for that': Amy McGrath on why female veterans are over Trump
This year’s midterm elections promise to bring historic changes. More women and people of color are running than ever before. One group specifically has seen a spike in the numbers running for political office: female veterans.
Meet Amy McGrath, the first female Marine to fly an F/A-18 Hornet in combat and now one of the record number of women who are running for office this year.
“We have all of these former military women running for Congress because we see what’s happening in our government. We’re basically saying, ‘I fought for my country and I am a woman and I’m not going to stand for that,’” McGrath tells Makers. “I don’t want to be there just to fill a seat. I want to make a difference.”
The surge in veteran candidates like McGrath comes at a time when representation of service members in Congress is at a low. In the 1970s, more than 70 percent of Congress had served in the military. As of 2018, just 20 percent of members of Congress are veterans, according to the Congressional Research Service.
On Tuesday, Nov. 6, McGrath wants to change that. She will go head-to-head with Andy Barr, her Republican opponent, in the fight for Kentucky’s Sixth Congressional District. The race, which was once seen as a long shot for Democrats in Lexington, Ky., is now one of dozens that have become closely contested.
“Women are fed up,” McGrath told a French TV reporter, according to Esquire. “They’re coming for things we’ve taken for granted, like birth control, and these are decisions being made with practically no women in the room. We have the lowest percentage of women in Congress in years. There is a higher percentage of women in the legislature in Afghanistan than in the United States.”
McGrath, a retired Marine fighter pilot and mom to three kids under 6, is running to be the first woman to represent her district in Kentucky. Earlier this year, the former pilot gained national attention for her viral campaign ad “Told Me,” which told the story of her dream of serving the country. The video now has nearly 1.8 million views on YouTube.
McGrath takes nothing lying down. When she was a young girl, she was shocked to learn that she couldn’t pursue her dream of flying for the military because, at the time, there was a federal law that banned women from engaging in combat.
Taking matters into her own hands, she started a letter-writing campaign to every member of the House Armed Services Committee.
One congressman replied and said that women didn’t have a place on the front lines of war. But then-Rep. Pat Schroeder, D-Colo., believed in McGrath. “The object of a war is to win. We should, therefore, field the best-qualified military possible,” Schroeder wrote to McGrath. “I think that it is time for military service to be based on qualifications, not gender.”
The law was repealed in 1993. And 200 flight hours and 89 flight missions later — including campaigns against the Taliban and al-Qaida — McGrath proved that Congress was dead wrong about women.
“The Marine Corps was the toughest thing a woman could do in the military. And that is exactly what I wanted,” McGrath tells Makers. “I remember going into Afghanistan and looking out at the men who were working and having them look at me — the wonder in their eyes. They had never seen a woman who was treated with the same type of respect as all the other Marines, a woman as an equal. … That’s showing people American values. That’s changing minds.”
McGrath continues, “What people ought to know is that it’s members of Congress — it’s people, it’s women in governments — that can make these changes. And this is why we need more women in government.” Currently just four female veterans serve in Congress: Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.; Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa; Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii; and Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz.
“The culture does not change until women rise in the ranks,” McGrath says, “whether it’s in the military or whether it’s in a company, into positions where they are respected peers or in the positions of power.”
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