Pete Hegseth fired a three-star admiral with no reason given. On Wednesday, Mark Kelly endorsed her for Congress.
Her name is Nancy Lacore. She spent 35 years in the Navy, rising from pilot to vice admiral to chief of the Navy Reserve. Last August she was called into a senior officer’s office and told Hegseth had ordered her firing. “There was no reason given,” she said.
Within the hour she had cleared out of the Pentagon for good, one of the senior officers swept out in Hegseth’s purge of the military’s leadership.
In January she launched a campaign for Congress. Last week she won the Democratic nomination in South Carolina’s 1st District, the seat Nancy Mace abandoned to run for governor and lose. The district holds one of the largest military communities in the country, and the Cook Political Report has moved it out of the safe Republican column.
Kelly knows exactly what she’s up against, because Hegseth came for him too.
After Kelly and five other lawmakers filmed a video reminding service members they are not required to follow illegal orders, Hegseth issued the retired Navy captain a formal letter of censure and moved to strip his rank and cut his pension. A federal judge blocked it.
Hegseth could not touch the senator. So the senator is funding the fired.
Kelly endorsed Lacore alongside nine other veterans running for office, with a pledged donation to each, part of more than a million dollars he has put into races this cycle. Navy helicopter pilots. A JAG officer. A NASA chief of staff. “Veterans understand what it means to put country before self,” he wrote. “These leaders did it during their time in service, and now they’re answering the call again.”
The purge was supposed to remove these people from public life. It is what’s putting them on ballots.
You can fire an admiral. You cannot order a civilian to stay quiet.
Hegseth’s order put her on the ballot in November. The irony is so sweet.
Pete Hegseth fired a three-star admiral with no reason given. On Wednesday, Mark Kelly endorsed her for Congress.
