Go, Brian Mast, Go!

There will be thousands of candidates vying for congressional, and senate seats in the 2016 general election, but only one the Army Times says “first started thinking about running for Congress from his hospital bed at Walter Reed”. Explosive ordnance disposal expert Brian Mast was bedridden for two months after losing both his legs to a land mine in Afghanistan, during which time a double amputee wanted to be the candidate, who could more than double the chances of a strong voice for vets if elected to Congress. In one of the most hotly contested primary seasons in memory, oxygen’s at a premium. Giving Brian Mast some air gives air to all cheering vets, who remain the backbone of civilian freedom.

“Last summer, Mast, who medically retired as a staff sergeant, launched his quest to represent Florida in its 18th Congressional District. The incumbent, Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy, is running for the Senate, leaving a wide-open contest for the seat. (Army Times, Oct 26, 2015) “Mast, who is running as a Republican, faces a primary challenge against five other candidates.

Challenges of even the most serious kind never held Brian Mast back. “I’m in the throes of a heated primary,” he said. “This race that I’m in is one of the most likely pickup seats in the entire country. That’s what makes it such a heated race.” To see Brian Mast run is to want to run the race with him, even if you’re only watching on YouTube on a computer chair, from thousands of miles away in another country.

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That’s because we should all be ‘running’ the way Brian Mast does, leaving setbacks far behind, staying sure-footed in the race called Life. For any of those who thought going directly from a hospital bed to the challenges of an election race, within months Mast had “doubled” the fundraising efforts of his opponents, and saw mounted, requests for speaking engagements:

“Almost every single day, to include the weekends, I’m booked almost from when I wake up in the morning until I go to bed.”

Other primary candidates are running on rhetoric and promises that somehow never get fulfilled. A patriot with his boots on the ground in Afghanistan, the army vet remains a patriot in civilian life. After the slaughter of five Marines in Chattanooga, Tennessee, by a 24-year-old radicalized Islamist named Muhammed Youssef Abdulazeez, this is what Mast posted on his Facebook page:

“Americans need to come to the realization and get past the point of speculating about whether or not Islamists groups like ISIS, who have called for attacks in the United States, will begin to wage war within our cities and towns. The United States is radical Islam’s new battlefield.”

The candidate we hope and pray gets to represent Florida’s 18th Congressional District runs on inspiration and has become a signature for the idiom that all is never lost so long as you’re still in there trying.

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Brian Mast has won every race he’s ever run, including a double amputee vow to get better so that he could spend every second he could making his wife and three children happy. Political rhetoric dies the moment the sound bite is over. The sound of the runner’s breath and of his prosthetics hitting the ground on the YouTube that shows Brian Mast running lingers long after the video ends. Even though as a Canadian, I can only vote for Brian Mast in my heart, I know which race I’ll be watching most intently on November 8, should he win the August 30 primary, with the assurance that the thousands who already voted for him will be doing the same thing. Go Brian Mast, go!