S.O.S. (Stories of Service) - Ordinary people who do extraordinary work
From the little league coach to the former addict helping those still struggling, hear from people from all walks of life how they show up as a vessel for service and drive for transformational change. Hosted by Theresa Carpenter, a 29-year active duty U.S. naval officer who found service was the path to unlocking trauma and unleashing your inner potential.
S.O.S. (Stories of Service) - Ordinary people who do extraordinary work
Chris Burnett – A Veteran Running for Congress | S.O.S. #226
What happens when a Marine JAG officer trades combat zones for campaign trails? Chris Burnett is finding out firsthand as he runs for Maryland's 6th congressional district.
After 22 years in the Marine Corps navigating the complexities of international and operational law across multiple deployments to Iraq, Burnett now faces a different kind of challenge. His military career taught him to translate complex legal frameworks into practical guidance for commanders making high-stakes decisions. Now he's applying those same analytical skills to the regulations strangling opportunity in his community.
The spark for his congressional run came from an unexpected place—his wife's attempt to open a small laundromat. As a military family of six settling in Maryland after his retirement, they discovered that Montgomery County's regulations and requirements made entrepreneurship virtually impossible. "There is just no opportunity for families, small businesses, and farmers to push back on what has become an overbearing county and state government," Burnett explains with the measured precision of someone who's spent decades evaluating risk and identifying solutions.
His campaign strategy mirrors his military approach—systematic, phased, and mission-focused. From securing seed money to building name recognition in a community where he's relatively new, Burnett embraces the challenge with the same attitude that drew him to the Marines: "It's the hardest thing you can do." He's translating military concepts like accountability and transparency into a political context, explaining to voters why these principles matter for effective governance.
For veterans considering public service after military life, Burnett's journey offers valuable insights on leveraging military experience in a political landscape. Despite the challenges—limited community connections, financial constraints, and explaining military expertise to civilian audiences—veterans bring unique problem-solving abilities and leadership experience that can restore trust in government.
Want to learn more about bringing common-sense leadership to complex problems? Visit burnettforcongress.com to connect directly with Chris about his campaign, military experience, or the transition to civilian service.
Chris Burnett for Congress: https://burnettforcongress.com/
Visit my website: https://thehello.llc/THERESACARPENTER
Read my writings on my blog: https://www.theresatapestries.com/
Listen to other episodes on my podcast: https://storiesofservice.buzzsprout.com
Watch episodes of my podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheresaCarpenter76
running for office, whether you want to run for office at the local level, at the city level or at the federal level. I think that a lot of the people who are watching the Stories of Service podcast are people who want to be civically involved. As you see, I cover a lot of issues that are of importance not only to the military community, but important issues in your neighborhood, important issues in Congress, and today I have my very first congressional candidate, chris Burnett. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on tonight.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm super excited to do this show and, before I get started, as I always do, welcome to the Stories of Service podcast. Ordinary people who do extraordinary work. I am the host of Stories of Service, teresa Carpenter, and, as we always do, we're going to get this story. We're going to get this podcast kicked off with an intro from my father, charlie Pickard.
Speaker 3:From the moment we're born and lock eyes with our parents. We are inspiring others by showing up as a vessel of service. We not only help others, we help ourselves. Welcome to SOS. Stories of Service hosted by Teresa Carpenter. Hear from ordinary people from all walks of life who have transformed their communities by performing extraordinary work.
Speaker 1:And today, as I said, I am sitting down with Chris Barnett.
Speaker 1:He is a devoted husband, father of four and a decorated Marine Corps officer whose life has been defined by service leadership and integrity.
Speaker 1:For 22 years he has served in the United States Marine Corps, leading Marines in combat zones, advising senior commanders as a JAG on complex legal and national security issues and shaping foreign policy from the Pentagon to the front lines, leaving Iraq, us Southern Command to Marine Forces Cyberspace Command. He has built a reputation for sound judgment, strategic thinking and results-driven leadership. And now he is stepping up to serve again, this time in Congress and as a candidate for Maryland's sixth congressional district. He's running to restore trust in government and fight for the issues that matter most to hardworking Maryland families. And today we're going to talk about how his service shaped his approach to leadership and accountability, lessons learned from the combat deployments and national security work, his vision for lowering costs, cutting waste and building opportunity for families and small business, why integrity and trust must be at the center of government and the priorities driving his campaign, from education and healthcare to border security and military strength. Welcome again, chris.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much.
Speaker 1:So, first off, as I always ask my guests, especially those who are in the military, where were you born and raised and what inspired you to join the Marine Corps?
Speaker 2:Well, that's a fun question and here's why. So I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, pennsylvania, and I came from a long line of Army folks. So my dad was Army, my uncle, his brother was Army and my grandfather was World War II Army. So as I was growing up, the military was just a part of sort of our collective mindset and it was something I always appreciated and thought I might do someday, but never really put a lot of thought into it directly. But it was really.
Speaker 2:After college I was living in Hilton Head, south Carolina. I was playing a lot of rugby and doing construction work, which I had been doing all through my undergraduate and into my early adult years. And while I was in Hilton Head, south Carolina, I was playing against the Paris Island Rugby Club and on the opposing wing happened to be a Marine and happened to be a Marine Corps lawyer, and we were on the wing one day having a conversation. He was like Chris, you know you seem like a smart kid and I know you like swinging a hammer and I know you like doing what you're doing. Maybe you should think about joining the Marine Corps and being a lawyer. It's the hardest thing you can do and I was sold. I was like you mean to tell me it's the hardest thing I can do to be a Marine Corps officer and a lawyer. Well, I'll try it. And lo and behold, I called up a recruiter, took the LSAT and found myself on a law contract a few months later on a law contract a few months later.
Speaker 1:Was there anything about the law that drew you in? Were you a person that always liked debate growing up, or were you a policy nerd? You like to look up policy, or something along those lines?
Speaker 2:It probably would depend on who you ask. My dad would say it's not that I enjoyed debating, it's that I always had an answer for everything. I always was talking back of some sort was what he would say. But there really were two things that drove me to the law. One was my older brother, who I always admired and looked up to. He was in law school and had become a lawyer at this point and I always admired his intellect, his level of focus and his ability to truly distill issues down. So I admired that. But really what kind of, I would say, was the final straw, so to speak, for me in terms of pursuing the law?
Speaker 2:Right after college I worked in an organization called Clear Corps, which was an AmeriCorps program, and it was construction work.
Speaker 2:We were doing lead paint reduction and abatement, and I enjoyed that work because we were working with low income families and we were doing construction work that was consistent with how you contain and abate an area, and more often than not we were working in homes where families were adversely affected by lead poisoning.
Speaker 2:A child under six years of age is prone to lead poisoning because their body confuses lead with the minerals and vitamins they need and actually acts as a neural inhibitor.
Speaker 2:So you're working with families that are impoverished and you're working with children that are being affected adversely by lead paint, so there's a genuine sense of purpose. So what I found as I was working for this program is we had a very limited budget and I had looked into the possibility of partnering with the Allegheny County Health Department and they were willing to work with us, but in a very limited capacity. And it wasn't until I read the provisions, the policy and the law that I was able to figure out how we could get almost triple the amount of money per household. And I was being told by lawyers in the health department that we just couldn't do anymore and the answer was no. And it was really in that moment, between admiring what my brother had become and seeing how beholden we are to lawyers, that I was like I never want to be in that position again where I'm trying to help and I simply can't because somebody else is telling me no.
Speaker 1:My God, chris, you just hit the nail on the head for me about law and about how it's so important that people know the law and why I have so many lawyers on my podcast, because people really do have so many more rights than they think they do if they take the time to understand the complexities of the legal profession, which is complicated by design, I think, sometimes I agree.
Speaker 2:I think lawyers have done a very good job of making themselves important, so they use language and they create a process that requires them to be involved, and I'm sure we'll get into this later, but I spent a majority of my career on active duty, undoing the work of other lawyers, trying to get to an operational framework that was consistent with the mission requirements, and then having to work oftentimes with lawyers that maybe didn't understand the mission and defaulted to no because that was the safe answer, and my recommendation to the commander was always here's a legal framework for you to make a risk assessment about your decision versus a lawyer making a decision for you being a safe decision.
Speaker 1:My God, chris, I agree, and there is so much I have seen since being on this podcast journey about commanders who unfortunately abdicate their responsibilities to the JAG community instead of thinking through that. The JAG is just one piece of the puzzle. They are a legal advisor, but that doesn't absolve the commander of understanding the legal framework as well and making sound judgments. That sometimes do come with risk, and that's OK 100 percent.
Speaker 2:I mean I spent a majority of my time on active duty, in large part because it was shaped by 9-11. And we had talked about this off camera. I was commissioned the summer of 2001. So I went back to my second year of law school as a newly commissioned second lieutenant coming off of OCS, and September 11th happened during my second year of law school and it changed the entire trajectory of my focus and my sense of purpose. Really, I had thought that I was going to do what everyone else would do is you go in, you do a couple of years on active duty, then you go back to whatever life you have in front of you and then, following September 11th, my trajectory changed dramatically and here we are, nearly 24 years later, between finishing law school and active duty, as a retired Marine and former Marine lawyer. But I spent most of my time focused on international and operational law because of its direct application to mission accomplishment, risk assessment and really setting the conditions for Marines and other service members to succeed.
Speaker 1:Right, it's where the rubber meets the road Exactly Is operational law and there is so much within the field of OPLaw that people don't understand when it comes to treaties, when it comes to security cooperation agreements between other nations. Tell us a little bit about that, because I have a lot of lawyers on who we talk about the personnel side and the military justice system, but you're the first lawyer that I've talked to that really has the op law focus and I'd love to get your perspective on sort of the differences between an operational law lawyer than somebody who's working, the disciplinary issues within the command.
Speaker 2:It's a great distinction to draw out here. I know some brilliant lawyers that are phenomenal at transactional work, that are great at the administrative side, like investigations and looking into how you conduct yourself in garrison or anywhere in the United States, yourself in garrison or anywhere in the United States. But whenever you get into international and operational law, you're now dealing with US law, foreign law, international rules and provisions and policy and treaties. But most importantly, what you are is a planner. So more often than not you'll have an international or operational lawyer really aligned to or working with the planners and that could be the S3 or the G3. And it could be assisting them in framing a mission, interpreting orders and then applying that to a mission. But ultimately you're setting the conditions for planners to make decisions about where they can assume risk, where there is a hard no and then how there is a pathway to yes. It could include a risk assessment or risk mitigation factors.
Speaker 2:And what I found is some of the most complicated areas of the law is whenever you're in a phase four or a phase five environment where it's post kinetic operations and you're now having to work through reconstruction, you're having to work through the reestablishment of the rule of law. You're now having to look at escalation of force and rules of engagement. You're having to look at this through a legal and policy lens as well as the optics, and there was oftentimes where I was asked by a commander that said, okay, what can we do, what should we do and how will those things be interpreted, both by a local population, by USS audience, and then through a political lens. And these were all part of a risk calculus and it was a big part of advising the staff and that commander on how to make an informed decision that was going to mitigate risk to mission and risk to force.
Speaker 1:Right, and I will say, having attended the Hague-Seth confirmation hearing you might have heard the term jag off and the discussion that went took place about rules of engagement. And I'm curious from your perspective and I'm sure he has worked with tons of wonderful jags and that was probably just one of many of experiences that he's had but did you ever feel while you were because I know you've done you served in Iraq Did you also serve in Afghanistan as well?
Speaker 2:I did not. I did four deployments on the ground in Iraq and then I did a MEU where we found ourselves in support of Iraq, which was ironic, so I couldn't get out of that area. It seemed like everywhere. Every time I thought I was going to go anywhere else, I found myself on the ground in Iraq or nearby on a large ship supporting operations in Iraq.
Speaker 1:On a mission that was related to Iraq. So tell me a little bit about the rules of engagement. Did you ever feel that? Again, these are all just questions that I'm sure the audience is curious about. Sure the audience is curious about Now I'm curious about because you're the first, like I said, lawyer that I've had on where we're not talking sailor. You know disciplinary issues or court marshals or other things, and so this is just fascinating to me. On a personal level, did you ever have experiences while you were downrange where you felt like the rules of engagement limited the ability of the commander to carry out the mission? Engagement?
Speaker 2:limited the ability of the commander to carry out the mission. Well, yeah, that's a. It's not an easy question to answer because you're driven. It's a factual, fact-based assessment. What I will say is that we were oftentimes in a self-defense posture and it was because we were having to determine what was a military target in a mixed environment. So, in other words, did you have civilians? Did you have civilians participating in hostilities? And then did you have no kidding forces that were hostile but were indistinguishable from the civilian population? So, whether it was 2004, while there was still kinetic operations happening, or the very last time I was deployed up through CJTF OIR in 2021, very different environments and the rules of engagement varied based on what the needs of the mission were and what our risk tolerance was.
Speaker 2:And I started every ROE brief with our job is to assume risk as Marines, as service members deployed.
Speaker 2:Our job is to assume some risk so that we can protect the most vulnerable.
Speaker 2:The idea is that if we have to absorb a little bit of risk to ensure that a vulnerable population is protected, then that's what we do, and that message resonated across what, quite literally, are hundreds or even thousands of ROE briefs that I gave.
Speaker 2:Because, explaining that why gave a young Marine or a sailor in some cases soldiers an understanding of why they were assuming risk and why we have a permissive ROE that can be restrictive of individual self-defense based on the circumstances.
Speaker 2:And then I would usually follow that up with a very detailed discussion about interpreting and deciphering when you can execute self-defense and what that would look like.
Speaker 2:In walking through scenarios and what I found was is that the better you equipped young Marines and service members with that information so that they could make informed decisions about protecting themselves, protecting the other service members with them and in some cases, other foreign nationals or local nationals, then they felt much more comfortable with that. So I oftentimes try to mitigate what you just described as a frustrating interpretation of the ROE by equipping all of those service members with as much information as possible so that they could make a good, informed decision on the spot. And so I would say very rarely did I directly encounter a restrictive ROE that put us unnecessarily at risk, because oftentimes the Marines and soldiers and sailors that I worked with we went to great lengths to understand, to explain the importance of applying the ROE in a way that was going to allow us to conduct a mission but, most importantly, to protect those people that we were there to protect.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great. That's awesome. I know that that's just been a contentious issue that gets discussed a lot in military circles is the idea that it's so restrictive that it keeps people from being able to shoot back if something were to happen, and that is obviously an unsafe situation for people to encounter. So it's great to hear that there were those situations with those particular staffs where those issues were mitigated and were dealt with appropriately. Tell me a little bit about as you further went down your military career and you started moving up in the ranks. Did you start to think there's a time that I'm going to want to transition and move on to something else? Or did you think to yourself I'm going to be a T? I think it's a T JAG right, the one star of the of the Marine Corps JAG community? What was your thinking as you started to move forward in your career?
Speaker 1:I wish I had a good answer.
Speaker 2:But all I have is I love being a captain. I love being at the battalion level. I really enjoyed being that connected to the Marines and going out on patrol and being that involved. You know we joke in the Marine Corps that it's colonels, captains and corporals that make the entire machine run, and that's absolutely true and I loved every minute of being a captain. I had a chance to be a company commander in Iraq with a service company. I had a chance to do a variety of deployments, both in Takatum, across Fallujah, ramadi and other areas, and those were unique to being an action officer role. And then, as a major, I jokingly said I would. I would accept being a major for the rest of my career if I could just stay on a MUTE or a Marine Expeditionary Unit.
Speaker 2:The only part was because I was in Del Mar Boat Base and aboard Camp Pendleton, which has got to be the best duty station in all of the Marine Corps and then, as a Lieutenant Colonel, I had said I would be happy remaining a Lieutenant Colonel for the remainder of my career because of the opportunities that existed there. So what I found was I was never thinking too far ahead, it was really just embracing the role that I was in, making the most of that and then ultimately having to decide where I can make the greatest contribution for the Marine Corps and then also to start taking care of my family. So the decision to get out was after five deployments and six moves and almost seven years away. The decision was to finally retire and move on to what's next, which has led me to running for office of all things.
Speaker 1:Right, right and like. That's also so interesting to me in and of itself, because a lot of people, when they get out, they're like, oh my gosh, I've had such a crazy life. I need to settle down, I need to take a deep breath, I need to, you know, maybe get into a nice cushy GS job, whatever Not that all GS jobs are cushy, but I'm just saying like, do something that's more like stable and consistent, but not not. Chris Burnett, you said nope, I'm going to run for office, so tell me a little bit about how that began as an idea.
Speaker 2:Well, you know it was. It's funny, my wife would be the first one to tell you that this was not the plan. I think she had thought maybe I finally would not. You know, not no longer deploying, no more moves, a little bit of stability. But really it was. It was a process, quite frankly, because while I was on active duty I was not politically engaged. I felt like my focus was on being on active duty and that this is. You know, you're fighting for those political freedoms and those fundamental freedoms for every American citizen. But as a as a Marine on active duty, focused downrange, I wasn't terribly political. I paid attention to it, but it wasn't something I was always dreaming about or thinking about.
Speaker 2:Next, and it wasn't until I landed in Maryland following that last deployment, where I started to pay attention to where we were and how decisions were being made and where I thought I could effectuate some positive change, and even then it was. There was some uncertainty there as to where we were going to be coming off of COVID, that last deployment. And when I arrived in Maryland, I arrived on orders. You know, I was coming out of CJTF OIR, which was the counter ISIS mission. My wife and kids were still in Florida. So we essentially met in DC and all that I really had in hand was orders to the Pentagon and at the time they were at about a 10% capacity because it was still very much in the post COVID emergency, medical emergency kind of status. So we bought the house that we're in sight unseen and it had everything to do with the commute to the Pentagon a potential commute to Marine Corps Base Quantico in Northern Virginia and then a potential commute to Mar 4 Cyber, which is in Fort Meade. And it really wasn't until I arrived here that I started to see just how different things could be. And comparing Florida to Maryland, it's night and day. At that point in Florida our kids were back in school, they were back in sports, they were back fully engaged, assuming the risk associated with that phase of COVID.
Speaker 2:And then I got to Maryland, in Montgomery County in particular, and you started to see just how adverse decisions, how adversely your life, could be affected by policy decisions that were being made at the county, state and community level.
Speaker 2:And I started to really think about well, if we're going to stay here and we made the choice to stay here then I wanted to be involved in that decision-making. I wanted to be a part of that process to bring about common sense solutions to ultimately set the conditions for families, small business owners and, in the case of Maryland's sixth congressional district, for farmers to thrive again. And in Maryland in particular, there is an overwhelming amount of taxation, regulation and a real lack of opportunity. So this is how I went from being focused on active duty and focused downrange to then starting to look at well, if I'm going to make Maryland my home, how and where can I engage the political process to have an impact? And based on my background spending 22 years on active duty, delving mostly into federal law, foreign policy and national security running for Congress was the natural selection, the natural progression for continuing to serve.
Speaker 1:What were some of the fissures that you saw in Maryland? I always loved just the origination of the seed. What were some of the things that you saw in the schools or then you saw with the farmers or that you saw locally, that you were like, oh hold up here, this doesn't seem right. I'm curious at kind of what you were seeing in the lay of the land.
Speaker 2:Some examples Well, I can give you several examples, but I'll start with. There's a super majority in Maryland, and anytime there's a super majority, you have a lack of diversity of thought, and so what you find is there's just a march further and further left in the name of distinguishing yourself from whatever the current party line is, and what that's resulted in is really a mismanagement in terms of the budget, in terms of opportunities, in terms of vanity projects whether it was the Green New Deal or some other projects that have been proposed across Maryland that have just left Maryland flat footed. They have just left Maryland flat footed both in terms of how they're approaching organic energy production and how they rely on a regional grid, and they provide very little to the grid. And you know, you see, now electrical rates are going through the roof because you have some of our neighbors that are energy exporters. Or you have some of our neighbors in the case of Virginia, because they've gone all in on data centers. They're now drawing an inordinate amount of some of that from the grid, and so you have Maryland positioning itself in what I thought was really a superficial attempt to be the leader in the Green New Deal effort, and it's undermined its own residents' needs, and that is you have increasing residential rates. You have power lines that are crisscrossing the state that nobody likes, turning good farmland into heavy power lines delivering power to Virginia. And then you also have part of the ag reserve that was set aside for farmers to grow crops or have livestock being converted into solar fields. And just very recently you heard that the Trump administration had canceled the wind farm that was proposed off of Ocean City, maryland, which, again, if you looked at the cost the actual cost of the project and then the energy it would produce, it would never even offset the carbon footprint of the production of the site, let alone provide an adequate amount of power needed for the residential needs needs. And then that doesn't even take into account what the needs of the AI economy are going to require in terms of data centers and quantum computing and some of these other energy intensive areas. So that was just the one big example where you saw a misuse of resources and misguided priorities affecting everyday lives of Marylanders and certainly the residents of Congressional District 6.
Speaker 2:Then we also saw within the schools that decisions were being made not based on achievement, merit or challenging kids academically. You were very much in it with a DEI focus and the focus came down to, you know, inclusivity and indoctrination over challenging kids academically, and you started to see decisions being made that had nothing to do with the academic interests of the children. And you started to see decisions being made that had nothing to do with the academic interests of the children and I thought it was more political grandstanding. And the one that's probably most prevalent, and I'm sure you've heard, is the Mahmoud decision. That was a Montgomery County Public Schools decision that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2:And what had happened in Montgomery County is there was a influx of LBTQ plus material, which in and of itself would not be a problem if there was an educational value attached to those materials. But what had happened is, in an effort to move these materials into the classroom, they did a couple of things that cut parents out, and one was if they were going to use these materials or they were going to talk about these subjects. The idea was that would allow parents to opt out for religious reasons.
Speaker 1:Can you clarify what the subject material was Like? Was it stories about women and women together? Was it? What was it?
Speaker 2:I mean was it?
Speaker 1:age appropriate, I mean.
Speaker 2:Depending on who you would ask, you know they would say that it was age appropriate. You know how a small child would transition from a boy to a girl or girl to a boy. Some sexually explicit material to talk about sexuality as it relates to development across, you know, preschool through high school. Um, in some cases it would be the. The focus would be on an lbtq author discussing those topics in a book. So you were talking about materials that parents might want to have that conversation with their children directly.
Speaker 2:If you want to call it a birds and the bees discussion. That was something that was more appropriate at home, so they started as an opt-out choice, where the parents would receive an opt-out sheet. They would say this period, we want to have our child sit in the library and then we'll have this conversation at home. Then what Montgomery County decided was this was too much of a burden and they removed the opt-out provision and so they were providing these materials to the kids without any notification to the parents and no opportunity to opt out. And that decision was challenged and it went all the way to the Supreme Court and under the free exercise clause, they said that this undermined the role of parents being able to guide and influence the education of their children, especially when it came to sexually explicit materials involving LBTQ plus material. And that was yet again.
Speaker 2:The problem wasn't just the materials, it was cutting parents out and basically saying that administrators and teachers know better. It was cutting parents out and basically saying that administrators and teachers know better and this idea that you would have school being a place where things were being discussed and taught to your children you either had no knowledge of or they had no obligation to tell you about. And so these were the things that were coming home with my own kids, some of our neighbors, where I started to really see the importance of hey, we need to focus on common sense solutions. We need to put parents first, we need to make sure that these things operate with complete transparency and that we hold our government officials, whether it's at the school board level or Congress. We hold them accountable to their word, which is to serve the public's interest.
Speaker 1:Yep, and I think you said something at the beginning of this that really stuck with me, and that's that diversity of thought. The problem is not that everything has to be right of center and we have to have more conservatives all over Congress. I don't think that's the solution. The solution is to have a balance, and we get ourselves out of balance if we have an entire community or the entire Hollywood or the entire military, that's only focused on DEI, that's only focused on identity, and I personally believe that that trumps unity.
Speaker 1:So when we're so focused on this person's race I mean I've got these readings right now for college and you know it's great to be exposed to this I get it. But at the same time it's so hyper-focused on identity and I don't believe that brings us together as Americans. If I'm reading about how oppressed this one particular group is, I get it. Everyone has been oppressed in some way, shape or form, their whole life, and it's not that we don't want to read about it. I mean, we all read about Martin Luther King, we read about these wonderful civil rights activists. There is something that's fundamental to our history to learn those things. But I feel like we've kind of swung the pendulum for DEI in this way, where now it's become toxic and corrosive and divisive 100%. Go ahead.
Speaker 2:I was going to just add. I think we went from teaching people how to think in terms of thinking critically and engaging material and getting into an uncomfortable space to learn to telling people what to think. If you don't think like us. You're a bigot. They throw a label at it and then by labeling you as something you're dismissed.
Speaker 2:That undermines debate, that undermines our ability to find some level of compromise that supports an overwhelming majority of people's interests, Again setting the conditions for people to decide for themselves, to act on their own behalf, to be responsible for their own decisions. And I do think DEI took that choice away and said we know better. You should be doing X and if you say anything about that, we're going to call you a name and we're going to tell you to go away. We're going to cancel you, we're going to say you're a racist, we're going to call you a name and we're going to tell you to go away.
Speaker 1:We're going to say you're a racist. We're going to say you're a sexist. We're going to say all these things instead of no. We want to discuss the fact that there's these type of materials in our classrooms being taught to our children. Maybe we want to have these kinds of conversations. Maybe we have particular values, whether that's from our faith, whether it's from just these are the. These are the things that are okay in our family. We want to have the right to have those conversations, and so I think it's really great that you're a community banded together to push this forward. So I can see where the seeds were planted for you to start a congressional campaign. When did you? What month was it? February when you first kicked off your campaign?
Speaker 2:No, I retired in February, so my last day on active duty was February 28th. At that retirement ceremony I had every intention of taking a few months off, reconnecting with my family and then looking at doing what you had described, which is, you know what I would argue is, you know, kind of cashing in on your active duty experience. You can go and fall into a GS-15, gs-14 position. You could go work for a defense contractor. There's a number of options that are very attractive, that will leverage your experience. And what I found during that period of reflection was I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I wasn't somehow involved in this discussion, if I wasn't involved in this fight to bring common sense solutions that are going to help families in small business. And it's funny I'll share a quick story about that where I think I got my wife on board.
Speaker 2:She's still a little apprehensive, but over the last several years my wife she's from West Africa. She grew up in Guinea. She came here under as a political asylee. There was a military coup and there's been several, but there was one in particular where it was particularly bloody and it was particularly violent and her father, who had been involved in the government, was being targeted. So her family qualified as for political asylum and her mom and dad came to the United States and then she stayed there for a few more years and lived with her grandmother and when she finally arrived in high school she learned to speak English by going to an American high school, graduating and going on to college to study electrical engineering. She became a naturalized citizen through our marriage and we have four beautiful children together and we've been on this journey together for now, you know, coming up on nearly 20 years.
Speaker 2:But her dream, to kind of complete this journey, was to own a business. You know the American dream, so to speak. She came here as a political asylee, learned to be successful and gained an education. But she wanted to start a business and as she looked around, montgomery County in particular, she looked to open a laundromat and through her research it was going.
Speaker 2:Montgomery County requires for a new business and as a military family of six on a single military income, there was just no way for her to engage that process.
Speaker 2:To sit on a building, sit on a lease, to sit on the cost of refurbishing it for a year, to own a small business and essentially contribute to the local economy, and at that point it became clear it's clear to her as it had become to me that there is just no opportunity for families, small businesses and, in some cases, farmers out in the ag reserve to push back on what has become an overbearing county and state government that is simply not setting the conditions for people to succeed. I feel like most residents of Western Maryland and Congressional District 6 feel like pawns in a political game, and none of their interests are being met and they're being nickel and dimed through taxes, fees and overregulation. And by the time they take care of everything from registering their vehicle to purchasing a fishing license, there's literally nothing left over, and so we have to do something to reduce that cost of living and create a pathway of opportunity.
Speaker 1:Man, god bless you for stepping up like this. So many people don't. So many people complain and they don't like what they see in their city, or they don't like what they see in their county, or they don't like what they see in the government or in Congress, but they're not willing to take that step that you took to actually run and there's so many barriers to admission. So let's talk about it, cause you know, I'm in a class right now and we're going to be teaching people how to run for office, and so what? What better time do I have than this podcast to just ask a little questions about how you've got your wife's blessing to do this? Then what do you do? Cause you've never, you don't know Congress, you didn't go to a master's program, like I'm in right now.
Speaker 2:So what did you do? It's very much an unscripted process. So you quite literally start reaching out in your community, and there's a Montgomery County Central Committee that I found myself reaching out to and asking them questions about how the Republican Party is organized and how they go about grassroots support. There's a number of Republican clubs that I reached out to and they all have advice. Many of them had run for office before at various levels. But even there you're somewhat on your own and you're competing in the marketplace of ideas both with other potential candidates and then with um, with anybody that would be in this area.
Speaker 1:So you were. You were going to these Republican meetings Cause I I just joined the Harrison County Republican club and all everybody there is, like you know, old school Mississippi, been here forever, and so you come in. You're the newcomer veteran. So how did that feel?
Speaker 2:You know, at first, again, it can be off-putting, but the way I approached it was I came here on military orders, I was directed to Maryland, but then I chose to stay.
Speaker 2:And then, once I knew I was staying, I wanted to become more invested in this community.
Speaker 2:So when I made the choice to stay and then I made the choice to run for Congress, that was a way of I wouldn't say smoothing over, but it was a way of addressing that concern of you know, are you just coming in to take advantage or, you know, as a newcomer, how can you possibly connect with folks that have been here their entire lives?
Speaker 2:And then that's where your military experience has to be explained and articulated to both your supporters and then to a larger audience, Because oftentimes one of the barriers of entry to running for office is not just the unscripted process but, more importantly, being able to explain all of the work that goes into being a military service member, enlisted or officer, both in terms of leadership, problem solving, working through different groups, whether it's a military planning groups, whether it's a military planning process, whether it's working with civilians, whether it's trying to work policy and legislation in the Pentagon or at the national security level, but it's being able to take that sea of acronyms in that weird mix of process and relationships and structure and then articulating that to civilian population that might have no frame of reference of what you do in the military outside of what they've been shown in movies in terms of bootcamp and in combat scenes.
Speaker 1:Right right, our first session that we did in DC, we talked about the advantages and the disadvantages of veterans running for office, and it was really fascinating because there are some distinct advantages. People do think favorably about military service. They understand that you've already stepped up and served your nation and now you are serving your nation in a new capacity. But there are disadvantages too, because we're the 1% and so a lot of people don't understand. They have their own prism of how they see military service. They see us as all combat PTSD ridden veterans, and many of us are places that you've been.
Speaker 1:But what I think, what stands a veteran out so much, is that we are so adaptable.
Speaker 1:We have gone to all these different countries and these different states and we have worked with so many different people with competing interests and had to, especially as officers, work across a staff of so many different ideologies and beliefs and we've had to unite as veterans.
Speaker 1:I mean that's one of the reasons why the military is at its core, is apolitical, is because we need to be able to work with people from all walks of life, all belief systems. We're all going to have our beliefs, we're all going to have things that we feel strongly about. But, number one, we need to be able to talk about them respectfully and not be mean to one another online, like some of the things I've been seeing from, sadly, from some active duty service members lately. And number two, we need to be able to do so in a way that respects all sides of issues, even if you don't agree with people, and I think that our military experience uniquely positions us to be able to do that, because all of us, especially at combatant commands or at the Pentagon, that's your daily bread, that's what you're doing day in and day out, correct?
Speaker 2:That's right and something as simple as I mean. When you and I hear the word accountability and transparency, that resonates. We know exactly what that means, and what I've found is I've been having to explain why accountability is more than a word or a phrase to a service member. It's what we live by. You know this idea that your reputation, your professional reputation, how you perform solving problems and solving problems within a very constrained environment and oftentimes in very difficult circumstances that defines your sense of purpose and direction in the military. So I'm having to take something as simple as the concept of accountability that would resonate across any veteran audience and explain to civilians what that means. What does that look like in a daily basis? How we lead selflessly and we lead by example, because it lends itself to the accountability of issuing orders and creating and setting conditions for other people to succeed, and that you're accountable to them and they're accountable to you and that relationship that's based on transparency and integrity. That means something in the context in which we've served. So articulating that to folks that maybe have heard of those things and maybe haven't lived by them, that can be a stretch. And then something as simple as you know, you and I could probably have an entire conversation. That's just acronyms and we have to stretch those out and not only explain what those things mean but then also how that is relevant to serving in a public office and it gets to the last point of.
Speaker 2:You know, there's been folks that have asked me why I started at Congress, why I didn't go to a local level or a lower echelon, and I'd say, well, first of all, there's no one is not more important than the other, there's just layers of complexity, and then the aperture is larger or smaller, but these are all essential positions, layers of complexity, and that the aperture is larger or smaller, but these are all essential positions and my experience just happened to align at the federal level. And then, as somebody who has arrived in Maryland in the last four years, coming up on five years, I am a relative newcomer. If I were to run at the county or state level because, as you've encountered, there's folks that have been here their whole lives and they're intimately familiar with those issues at that level. But at the federal level, where you're introducing yourself to a congressional district, and if your experience aligns with those issues and solving those problems, that's where you can make the greatest contribution.
Speaker 2:So it gets back to talking to veterans about where that entry point is. It's knowing what your experience aligns to, how you can articulate that experience and making a difference and then determining where you can have that greatest impact.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. So you started talking to the different Republican clubs. You put in some sort of paperwork to, to run for office with, with, with, with the, with the city, or with the state, rather. And then the next step is OK, now you have a campaign. What did that look like for you?
Speaker 2:it just like you said. You know you, you file paperwork and then a campaign begins.
Speaker 1:Okay, it's not a.
Speaker 2:it's not like the beginning of a race or a gunshot, it's just it begins.
Speaker 1:Do you have a staff, like, did you have to start going? Okay, now I'm going to bring together like friends of mine and people that are very loyal to me that can now be my campaign manager. Somebody needs to be my social media person. Somebody needs to be my scheduler so that I can go to, like the Kiwanis Club or the Rotary Club. I'm just curious at the mechanics of this.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you again. Getting back to the advantages and disadvantages of a service member, the advantage is we're used to doing five, six things at once. We're used to multitasking across all of those things that are required and we look at it simply as these things must get done. You know, we don't look at them as optional or we just say, OK, we're going to get all this done, it's going to get done. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you find yourself at the beginning of a campaign, functioning as a campaign manager, as a campaign coordinator, as your communications director. You met my son earlier, who is my entire production team as far as recordings, editing and publishing. He does a great job on social media. He works for food, which is great.
Speaker 1:Oh God, I love it, I love it yeah.
Speaker 2:But the real disadvantage is that a military family we're a family of six on a single military income, living in a very expensive area. So I didn't have a trust fund or a half a million dollars that I could put towards my own campaign and self-fund that early phase. I had to initiate a campaign fulfilling all those roles completely on my own, really leveraging the few friends and family that I have nearby, asking them for their help and assistance and guidance. But ultimately you start this unscripted process of very few resources, very few trusted individuals that you've known because of the transient nature of you know we live in a state for a couple of years, we meet people that we come to rely on, that are other service members, and then we move on. So this campaign started with we had to solicit seed money, we had to build out a strategy. I had to articulate that strategy to demonstrate my viability, and that was a very helpful but critical audience of folks that had run before, that know the district, that know the ins and outs of it and essentially selling them on, not just yourself and what you're presenting in terms of your work, ethic and experience, but more importantly your strategy, the demographics, the registration rates, the good and the bad of the district in terms of is there a high turnout rate, is there a high registration rate, is there a mail-in ballot roster that's going to be favorable or hurtful to your campaign? And then, once you're able to sort through all that information, articulate your plan, then volunteers and other individuals become available. Then volunteers and other individuals become available and then it's how well you can leverage your plan and set them up to assist the campaign that you start then gaining some traction.
Speaker 2:And again, in the case of most service members, the biggest hurdle is money. And then the next biggest hurdle is name recognition, because very rarely have we been able to participate in the community in the way that anybody else that's lived here for 20 years would have. My kids have played sports everywhere we've lived, but I've never had a chance to invest myself outside of two or three years of coaching to develop the baseball program, to develop the soccer program. We were always participants in an existing program. But had we lived in one place, I probably would have had a chance to coach years of kids that I would get to know, and get to know their families and be a part of that community. You just don't have those opportunities as a military family moving around.
Speaker 1:That's so interesting to me. Did you start? Ok, so timeline when is the election?
Speaker 2:The primary is next June, which is a very late primary given that the general election will be in November.
Speaker 2:Okay, so I made my announcement in June of this year and that was a hasty decision, you know, between retiring in February, sort of looking at what we were going to do next, and then deciding based on everything I just described. You know, knowing that I had to establish name recognition and that every penny that I spend I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to earn, I'm not going to be able to sell fund, I'm not going to be able to take out, you know, sell the vacation home, or I have a, you know, a nest egg that doesn't exist coming off active duty. So I needed to start early and get out and introduce myself, earn a lot of trust and then ask for people to support very early on. And that's been a challenge. But it's been a challenge that I've enjoyed because it's given me a chance to articulate what I want to bring to this race and how I want to represent their interests, to bring a voice back to Congressional District 6 that actually reflects their interests and their values.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. And, chris, I just want to say thank you for humoring me. There is at least one person that's listening to this as well and saying this is a very educational mentorship. So thank you so much, sean. Yeah, because I mean, like I said, I'm in a class right now that is teaching us all these things, but you're the first person I've spoken to who is doing it in real time and it's fascinating to hear this. So my next question is how did you decide, like, where you're going to speak? Like, if you've got you're in your district and you are, are you working with, like the Republican club to say, okay, I'm going to speak at this nonprofit organization or I'm going to speak at this charity fundraiser? Like, how do you decide, like, what events you go to and what things you're a part of?
Speaker 2:Well, I'll give you the short answer, then the long answer. The short answer is I'll go anywhere I'm asked to go. I never say no, I've. I've given a presentation in an IHOP, I've, uh, I've done, uh, basements, and I've spoken in front of 200 people, um, at a, at a club meeting. Uh, but I. But.
Speaker 2:What I will say, though, is part of that plan that I had to present to the folks in Montgomery County and then across the district was I put together a phased approach.
Speaker 2:Phase zero was prep registering with the FEC, which required me to get an IRS employee identification number, to set up a bank account, to create a WinRed account so that I could accept donations and have it FEC compliant.
Speaker 2:And then, once I completed phase zero, which was really the beginning of June, I then went into phase one, which was seed money and basic introductions, and there I prioritized going to and speaking at, every single Republican club, speaking at every single Republican central committee, and then trying to reach out to as many community organizations as possible. And then what I found was is that I transitioned into phase two, as I had achieved the seed money that I needed, and the seed money allowed me to buy things like yard signs, palm cards, which are those like three by six cards versus business cards. And then it also allowed me to start looking at how I was going to expand operations, and that was what would be the cost of maintaining all of the different IT and admin resources that are needed to run a campaign. So when I went into phase two, then the, the, the, the. It was a conditioned based transition, which you probably recognize.
Speaker 1:I love the way you did this, like you, just you looked at it like an op plan you just said, I've done op plans my whole life. I'm in op law. I'm going to look at my campaign as an op plan. I love that comparison.
Speaker 2:And that's exactly what I did. So the conditions were that I had enough seed money to have the administrative, legal and physical materials to move into what was a phase entirely dedicated to the next round of fundraising and then, most importantly, the next round of introducing myself to a larger audience. And this is where I started to then get out to do parades, community events, any organization that I could go to on the message to particularly identify those voters that are either low propensity or unaffiliated. So start having an eye towards the general election to tailoring that message so that we're hitting all of the requirements but, most importantly, already starting to focus on trying to get those persuadable voters on board and then also having a very deliberate focus on fundraising now that we've established a baseline level of name recognition.
Speaker 1:Wow, are you also doing as a part of like a federal campaign? Is door-to-door canvassing part of that as well? Wow.
Speaker 2:Wow, that's intense. Again, going back to how you you develop out a plan and then you have to very quickly devise a plan where you can leverage other people's abilities, and so what we've come up with and we're in the process of implementing is a way of creating voter profiles that will include um volunteers making a phone call and either leaving a voicemail that's a recorded message or leaving a voice message themselves, a follow-up door knock, follow-up phone call and then a follow-up direct mail or postcard campaign, and all of that would align with messaging that would be capped off with either paid advertising on different television or social media platforms and then aligning that with key leader engagements or specific events that you want to attend to align that messaging and so it is very much like an op plan and then setting conditions for volunteers to contribute in a capacity that they're comfortable with and that aligns with their skillset.
Speaker 1:I love it. I absolutely love it. I wish you lived in Mississippi. I would love to be a part of your campaign. I think this is just amazing the way you've structured this, and I'm really impressed with the preparation and the explanation that you're giving us. And yeah, Sean's still on the call and he says this is amazing. Hard work will definitely pay off. So definitely, this is really brilliant the way you've just kind of done this in such a sequential order to doing and the other question I wanted to ask.
Speaker 2:You must be meeting some amazing people through this too. You really do, and it's going to sound obvious, but you have to really embrace that, because I've spoken to people and they were either uncomfortable sharing their message or meeting people One. You have to really embrace the unknown. You know you go into a room full of people that some are going to like you just because there's alignment. Some people are going to really not like you because there's not alignment. But you have to go out in that environment and try to engage everybody and really try to win and I shouldn't say win, be convincing or persuasive in the marketplace of ideas.
Speaker 2:What I've found is I've met some fascinating people that are passionate about one issue or another, or folks that have been engaged in the political process for years, and they've got incredible advice. They've got incredible insight. More importantly, they really just wanted someone to listen and I've really enjoyed the number of people I've had a chance to meet, both Republican, democrat and unaffiliated and listen and learn, quite frankly, what inspires them, what moves them politically. Importantly, you try to make a positive impression, to say your voice does matter and what Congressional District 6 needs is someone that's going to solve problems that are going to make your life better, that's going to make your daily life improve, whether it's less regulation, lower taxes or just more opportunity into things that you want to do. Because at the end of the day I think we've become overly dependent on government for things to soften the blow in this idea that if we get comfortable with the government solving our problems, we lose the ability to solve our own problems. So I've had that conversation with folks that agree that they would accept more risk if there was more opportunity, but in some ways that has been circumvented and taken away by the level of deference it's given to the government right so people
Speaker 1:need to be. They're just. People are just happier being empowered. At first it's it's sort of like an adjustment because like, okay, the government's not going to bail me out, like I got to do it myself. But once you start to do things yourself, it's just like children, right, if you give a kid the, you know, the, the training wheels and you make it really easy and you don't give them the opportunity to really learn for themselves, they're they're not going to take those risks and they're not going to be as resilient. And so you have to do the same thing with with a community. You have to give the community the opportunity to fix their own problems and not, like you said, overly rely on government to do that.
Speaker 1:And I really do think, chris, that your message is unifying. I think it's not necessarily a partisan, republican message. This is a very centrist message that you're putting out there and it's very refreshing that you're putting out there and it's a it's it's very refreshing. And I think that you will pull in some of these people who are either in undecided or perhaps are even left to center because of the fact that you're just got this common sense approach that I think is is is very um, it just makes sense. And so I really wish you all the best and I'm definitely going to stay in touch with you and and see what happens, what happens come this June in the primaries.
Speaker 1:I think this will be really exciting to see what happens, and I always look at these, these, these opportunities in life that, no matter what happens, you're going to learn, like, like look at Catherine Catherine Leverett Levitt, the White House press spokesperson. She did not win where she ran, but she talks all the time about what an amazing opportunity that was and how she, you know, got so much from doing that. And then now, of course, she is Trump's spokesperson. So you just never know where these opportunities will take you, regardless of how the outcome turns out.
Speaker 2:You know and the one thing I hope is that you know our generation of service members.
Speaker 2:We were shaped by over 20 years of conflict. You know a high operational tempo and experience all over the world. I'm really looking forward to this generation of veterans becoming more civically engaged and starting to take that same sense of selfless service, setting the conditions for other people in pragmatic problem solving, and bring that back to government at every level you know at at the community level, the county level, the state level or, in this case you know, to congressional district six, because service members have so much to offer and oftentimes they're frustrated by that, that cost of entry, which is they're not from the area where they settled. They don't have the money to enter the race, where they have difficulty articulating the highs and lows of being on active duty. I really hope that our generation of service members continues to serve in any way in capacity that they feel comfortable because they have a lot to offer and I think they would bring a lot of common sense, transparency and accountability to government that right now there's. Some folks lack trust and I think service members could restore that.
Speaker 1:I agree, I agree. Well, thank you so much, chris. I'm going to meet you backstage after the call and I do my quick closeout, but before I do so, where can people find more information about you and where is the best place to learn more about your campaign?
Speaker 2:The website brunetteforcongresscom. All lowercase one word. That's a great place to start. My email and phone number is on there. I'm happy to talk to anyone really at any time. So if there's anybody out there that has questions about the campaign, life after active duty or the experiences I had on active duty, please call, please reach out and I'm happy to talk to you about anything.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, thank you very much. I'm going to go full screen and then I will meet you backstage, but really appreciate you taking the time to do the call.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:All right guys. That's a wrap for Thursday. So this weekend I will be taking off to Atlanta to attend the military influencer conference. I have one potential podcast next week that I'm still working through. Hopefully we will be doing it, so real excited for that and then I will be back at this uh, back in the home studio the week after next. So thanks so much for joining. As I always say to end these calls please take care of yourselves, please take care of each other and enjoy the rest of your evening. Bye-bye now.