Conor Lamb defends Gov. Walz from GOP attacks on his military record
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Minnesota Governor Tim Walz accepted his party's nomination for vice president on Wednesday night with a well-received and relatively short speech that stressed his personal story, including his 24 years in the National Guard.
But as KDKA-TV political editor Jon Delano reports, one local republican lawmaker has joined others to question Walz's military service.
Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, is proud of his military service.
"Everybody belongs, and everybody has a responsibility to contribute," he said on Wednesday night. "For me, it was serving in the Army National Guard. I joined up two days after my 17th birthday, and I proudly wore our nation's uniform for 24 years."
But in a letter to Walz, 50 Republican members of Congress, veterans like Guy Reschenthaler from Peters, accuse Walz of "lying about his service" and "abandoning his post by retiring two months before his unit received an alert that it could be sent to Iraq."
Several months earlier, Walz had announced he was running for Congress.
Reschenthaler was not available to talk about these claims, but former Congressman Conor Lamb, also a veteran, says this is just politics.
"These guys are terrified of Tim Walz and the way he tells the American story," Lamb said, "of I signed up to serve, I served many years, I learned important lessons about how to take care of other people. Because their guys, JD Vance and especially Trump, they're not known for taking care of anybody except themselves."
Lamb served with Walz on the House Armed Services Committee, where he says Walz reached out to him personally.
As for the GOP attack, Lamb says Walz has every right to call himself a command sergeant major even if that wasn't his rank at retirement, and he said he had the right to retire from the military to run for Congress.
"Tim served 24 years," Lamb said. "What was he supposed to serve? To infinity? And I would say the post that he has never abandoned is the post of public servant."
"When he talks about his rank, that was the rank he was wearing when he looked down on his collar in the last tour of his career," he added. "He was a command sergeant major, so he is entitled to say he served in that and he exercised an incredible amount of responsibility."
Lamb seemed particularly irked when fellow Marine Republican Vice Presidential nominee JD Vance attacked Walz's military service.
"I couldn't tell you one thing that Vance has actually done as a senator to take care of veterans or try to improve their lives," Lamb said. "That's what the issue is here."