Big oppo drop on Marcy Kaptur's opponent in OH-9. Can't remember the last time a candidate for a major office was credibly accused of stolen valor.
Really? It feels like it happens pretty much annually. Several of them are currently in office.
Also very hard to call what Majewski is guilty of here (calling himself an "Afghanistan War" veteran when he was deployed on a support mission to Qatar and calling himself a "combat veteran" because the U.S. government designated him one) "stolen valor"; it's the sort of misleading exaggeration that both veterans and politicians are well-known for. Something on this level happens pretty much every time a veteran runs for office.
This feels like something you'd see more often, but the more I think about it I can't point to many specific cases (doesn't mean they don't exist though). Regardless, whenever vet service is attacked the campaign usually refutes it forcefully, whereas Majewski's team practically concedes here. Also have heard that the candidate has made varying and differing statements about his service in different settings (which probably is what sparked the AP looking into) though I'm not too familiar with him or his team - first time candidate with bad handlers probably walked right into this one - so hard to draw a through-line for what exactly he's exaggerated.
The big comparison I can think of is Richard Blumenthal, who claimed to have been in Vietnam when he was actually in the Marine reserves stateside after getting multiple deferments. Frankly Blumenthal's case was worse (at least Majewski could argue he was participating in the Afghanistan war by loading boxes in Qatar around 2001) but it didn't seem to hurt him too much in the end. Of course OH-9 is a lot closer than Connecticut so it could make the difference but probably only if the race comes down to the wire.
