April 23, 2019

MJ Hegar Is Running for Senate Against Big John Cornyn

After narrowly losing a congressional race, the Air Force veteran is aiming higher.

The Air Force veteran behind one of the most viral videos of the 2018 campaign is back. MJ Hegar—who last year nearly knocked off a longtime GOP congressman in a heavily Republican district—announced Tuesday that she will challenge Texas Sen. John Cornyn in 2020.

Hegar burst onto the national scene last year with a video, titled “Doors,” that detailed her military service and her fight against the ban on women in ground combat jobs. She went on to narrowly lose her race against Republican incumbent John Carter in Texas’ 31st congressional district.

Cornyn—who Hegar now hopes to unseat in 2020—has his own experience with viral ads. In 2008, his campaign released a bizarre Wild West-style video called “Big John.”

Hegar referenced “Big John” in her own video announcing her Senate run. “He calls himself ‘Big John,'” she notes, “But he shrinks out of the way while Mitch McConnell gets in the way of anything actually getting done in our government.”

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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