Taking The Hill

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We had just finished making OFF TO WAR, a 10-part series for Discovery Times Channel about the Arkansas National Guard being deployed to Iraq. It was a project that took us two years to complete, one of those years spent living with the soldiers in Iraq.

After we returned, we heard about this group of about 50 veterans calling themselves the “Band of Brothers.” They were gathering in Washington D.C. on February 8, 2006 to announce their candidacies – as Democrats – for the United States Congress based on their opposition to the way the war in Iraq was being conducted.

As far as we were able to determine, this gathering represented the most veteran candidates to run for office at one time in U.S. history. We also learned that, at the time, there was only one Republican veteran candidate running, which was very surprising considering the military’s Republican leanings over the past few decades.

The Band of Brothers gathering was well before retired generals had publicly demanded Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation, and before it became common to criticize Bush’s plans for Iraq. And here we had military veterans voicing their opposition to the handling of the war. We’ve spent a lot of time with the military in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq and know that soldiers don’t easily break rank and rarely do they criticize a sitting commander-in-chief.

So we decided to go to the gathering in Washington, D.C. and check it out. What we found was a group of veterans, not unlike others we have known. The majority identified themselves as conservative – many claimed to be former Republicans – and few had ever thought about running for office before then. All said they were initially motivated to speak out and ultimately run for office because of their intense disagreement with how the current administration is conducting the war in Iraq, “using the troops as a political backdrop” without giving them the support they needed in battle. Another major issue, especially for the older veterans, was the continued cuts to veterans’ benefits.

We decided to follow this group and see how it all panned out. It wasn’t until months later that people started talking about the possibility of a complete turn-over of Congress from Republican to Democrat, and that these veterans – most of them amateur politicians – could turn out to be the deciding factor in this historic election year.

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We began filming on February 8, when the veteran candidates came together to announce their candidacies on Capitol Hill. From that day forward we went behind the scenes with five of the candidates, and we will continue to film with them right up through election night on November 7. We split up filming the candidates, spending a couple days per week with each of them for the entire campaign. With very few exceptions, all of the veterans are novice politicians. Though they were warned and counseled about the hazards of politics by former Senator Max Cleland, none of the candidates we filmed during that first gathering on Capitol Hill seemed to have any idea just how intense the campaign trail would turn out to be. Frankly, neither did we. As Senator Cleland put it, “going into battle against the enemy, ain’t nothing compared to going to battle with Republicans.”

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Commander Eric Massa calls himself a “no name, no money candidate,” which describes most of the Band of Brothers at the beginning of their campaigns. Only Captain Tammy Duckworth, a double-amputee helicopter pilot who was shot down in Iraq, had received much press at all. So in the beginning, most of them were eager for whatever attention they could get and were happy to have us around. We were requesting an intense amount of access to the lives and campaigns of the candidates, and as with any documentary project we had to earn continued trust. It helped that many of the candidates were fans of OFF TO WAR, the TV series we made in Iraq about the Arkansas National Guard.

Also our style is very unobtrusive. We film with a one-person crew using small digital video cameras. As a journalist in Iraq, if you become a burden on the soldiers you often get left behind. So we adopted that same philosophy with this project. We don’t like to get left behind. Our goal is always to tell the story of our subjects from their point of view and we don’t use voice-over narration in our films to interject our beliefs or opinions as filmmakers. After spending some time with us, the candidates came to understand that. They believe in what they are doing very strongly and realize that in order for us to tell a deeper story than you might get on the nightly news, they needed to let us in close, and allow us to do our jobs as filmmakers.

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There are over 50 military veterans running for Congress as Democrats under the name Band of Brothers, and at least one that we know of running as a Republican.

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Former Senator Max Cleland, a Vietnam Veteran, is the unofficial mentor and advisor to the Band of Brothers candidates. Cleland has logged tens of thousands of miles campaigning tirelessly around the country for these candidates. Speaking from his wheelchair, 10 and 12 hours per day, in and out of cars on the campaign trail, is obviously not easy for him. Max says that when he visits Walter Reed and looks down the corridors at the young soldiers with arms and legs missing from battles in Iraq, he sees himself back in that hospital almost 40 years ago. Max believes in his heart that this is his last great battle, and if he can help get a handful of the veterans elected, he can help change the course of history and put an end to the carnage in Iraq. Driving in western New York with candidate Eric Massa, Max told us that “to see this new generation going through this has been so painful I can’t even tell you. And to not be able to do anything about it, I mean my God, it’s Vietnam all over again. I’m fighting to the end on this one.”

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One thing that hit all the candidates like a MACK truck was how much money they would personally have to raise in order to be competitive. Eric Massa says that “money is the only litmus test for your viability as a candidate. For me it’s a great candidate, great message, no money.” A candidate for Congress is in the difficult position of having to prove you can raise vast amounts of money in order for the National Democratic Party to see you as a viable candidate and give you the resources you need to win. Most of the candidates were surprised to learn that it was more essential to victory to spend eight hours per day on the phone asking for donations than it was to get out and meet voters. For most of the veteran candidates who have very little personal wealth, and don’t even know many people who donate to political campaigns, the inability to raise millions of dollars was the beginning of the end of their hopes to win. As you’ll learn in the film, one of our candidates had to drop out of the race heartbroken and literally in tears only weeks before the election because he had exhausted all of his family’s savings.

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The candidates have gotten to know us very well and have become invested in the project. They also understand the importance of the film’s potential long term impact. These veterans could very well be the deciding factor in a historic turnover in the United States Congress. One of them said this film would be like if a documentary film crew had been with Newt Gingrich during the Republican revolution in Congress in 1994, and “who wouldn’t want to watch the behind-the-scenes version of that happening?”

Also, this is really a great political experiment to see if incredibly accomplished people who love and have served their country, but who have little or no money, can still win national office in this country. In the film you’ll see that through their naiveté as first-time politicians, these veterans learn the hard way how much money determines their validity as candidates. Out of that experience they have expressed their hope to us that their participation in this film will at the very least show people the imperative of campaign finance reform, or the day will come when everyone in Washington will be a millionaire. And how representative is that?

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This film certainly has elements of the campaign film genre, but ultimately we consider this a coming-home story about a few of our nation’s veterans. The day-to-day activities of running for office are not the priority of this film. Each of these candidates, at least initially, chose to run for office not because they wanted to be politicians, but rather as an extension of their military service. If it were not for the Iraq war, very few of these candidates would have ever run for office at all. In their minds the way in which the military has been used by the administration as a political backdrop, the way in which the troops have been under-equipped and the strategy of the Generals on the ground in Iraq ignored, and the way in which veterans benefits continue to be cut, together has compelled them to fight for a change in Washington.

And then there is the “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” element. I think like most people, we just assumed you had to be a millionaire these days to win a seat in Congress. We were surprised to find that there was a group of men and women, many of whom never made more than a $50,000 salary during their military careers, would even try to compete. We wanted to find out if it’s still possible. If veterans who have dedicated their lives to serving this country can’t do it, people with moderate politics and decorated military careers can’t do it, then who can?

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We approach all of our films with the same philosophy. Our goal is to find interesting and important subjects and let the people involved tell their own stories. It’s a little more comfortable to film political candidates in America than drug addicts in the streets or during combat in Iraq. But regardless of the environment, we take each project on with the same intense responsibility to tell the subjects’ stories as fairly and completely as we can.

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Our goal has nothing to do with party affiliation at all. We just wanted to tell the story of what brought together such a large group of political outsiders to run for public office. What’s more is this Band of Brothers, who one year ago looked like sure losers, could possibly change history and shift the balance of the United States Congress. These candidates are running as Democrats, but as one candidate said, “I’m running as much against Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic party in my district as I am against the Republicans.”

Most of these candidates are moderate to conservative in their beliefs, and many are upfront about why they are running as Democrats. They believe the Republicans are messing up the war and corroding the armed forces. Furthermore, as political outsiders, these veterans have faced as much opposition to their campaigns from their own parties as they have from the opposing party. Without significant support from Republicans voters, none of these candidates can win in the conservative districts in which they are running. Many have said that they don’t put their party affiliation on their lawn signs so as not to alienate any potential voters. You sense that with some, who have memories of the Democratic Party during the 60’s which was perceived to have turned its back on veterans, the label of Democrat is a bit hard to get used to.