Voters In Pennsylvania's 17th Congressional District Will Choose Between Veterans In The 2020 Elections

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Fewer Americans serve in the military than ever -- about one-half of one percent.

But voters often like military men and women in public office.

One local congressional district will have several veterans to choose from when they vote in 2020, and all three candidates say that's a good thing.

There was a time when three-quarters of the members of Congress had served in the military.

That's down to 18 percent today.

"We could use more of them in Congress," U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, a Mt. Lebanon Democrat, told KDKA political editor Jon Delano on Veterans Day. "Veterans tend to be practical people who like to solve problems."

A former Marine, Lamb, a lawyer when he signed up, says he went through basic training like any other Marine.

"That was why I chose the Marines because that's part of their philosophy -- that every Marine is a rifleman first," he said. "And that shared experience, doing all that hard training together, makes it that much more of a tight powerful community."

But already two other veterans, both Republicans, have stepped up to challenge Lamb in 2020.

Former Army Ranger and platoon captain Sean Parnell who was wounded in Afghanistan.

"At some point you sign on that dotted line, you put your country before you, before making a buck, before your family," says the Cranberry Republican. "You write a blank check for up to including your life when you serve."

Parnell shares Lamb's view that military service trumps partisanship.

"Veterans are more likely to work in a bipartisan manner with other people," he said. "We're more likely to reach across the aisle because as I said earlier, country comes first."

No surprise former Air Force captain and pilot Scott Timko, also a Cranberry Republican, agrees.

But this combat veteran says vets know how to make decisions, too.

"What the military teaches you, it brings you leadership, the ability to collect information, to make decisions, to evaluate circumstances, to look at a problem from all angles and decide on a course of action, and then to be decisive and execute your plan," stresses Timko.

It's really up to voters to decide how important it is to them to be represented by a veteran in the U.S. Congress.

Nineteen of the 100 senators have military experience, and 77 of the 435 House members were in the military.

But in Pennsylvania's 17th congressional district that stretches across much of Allegheny County, into Cranberry, and all of Butler County, voters will have at least three veterans to consider.