About this response & our editorial approach
About this candidate response
DutyStation contacts candidates to ask whether and how they support service members, military families and veterans, and invites them to share their thoughts and priorities. We share their replies here in the candidate’s or campaign’s own words, with minor formatting for readability and correction of obvious spelling mistakes.
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Organized by topic. Email greetings and sign-offs are omitted; campaign contact details appear alongside.
Government shutdown and cooperation
- I oppose government shutdowns. They are the result of Washington's failure to do the basic job of governing, and the people who serve should never be caught in the middle.
- I am running as an independent with the Forward Party, so I am not bound to either side in these standoffs.
- I would work with anyone, from either party, to pass the budget on time and bring back regular order instead of governing by crisis.
- If a shutdown still happens, no service member, military family, or veteran should miss a paycheck or a benefit because of it.
- I support guaranteeing military and essential pay through any lapse, protecting VA health care and benefits with advance funding, and keeping claims and care moving.
- We ask these families to sacrifice enough. Their stability should never be a bargaining chip.
Quality of life
- Pay should keep pace with the real cost of living, with the biggest raises for junior enlisted, many of whom qualify for food assistance while serving. That is wrong, and I would fix it.
- On healthcare, protect and strengthen TRICARE access, especially at and around bases like NAS Jacksonville.
- Childcare is a readiness issue: expand capacity on base and fee assistance so parents are not stuck on waitlists for a year or more.
- Spouse employment needs a real push on license portability across state lines, access to remote work, and hiring partnerships, so a spouse does not restart a career with every move.
- We can also ease the churn of frequent moves with PCS reimbursement that covers what a move actually costs.
- These are the people behind the mission. Taking care of them is how we keep good people in uniform.
Veterans’ care
- This one is personal. Three generations of my family served in the Navy, and my father retired from NAS Jacksonville. More than 50,000 veterans call FL-04 home, and too many wait too long for the care they earned.
- I would fully fund the VA, with no cuts and no privatization of core services, so wait times come down instead of up.
- Expand mental health care, including PTSD and moral injury treatment and real suicide prevention, with enough providers to meet demand.
- Fix the claims process with firm, enforceable timelines so disability decisions take weeks, not months.
- And close the transition gap: connect separating service members to jobs, housing, and mental health support before they leave, not after they fall through the cracks.
- I want VA leadership that has worn the uniform, and accountability measured by how fast veterans get seen.
Family housing
- Military families should never live with mold, pests, or unsafe water, yet too many do because private contractors faced no real consequences. Accountability comes first.
- I would hold housing contractors to enforceable standards, tie their payment to passing independent inspections, and give families a real tenant bill of rights, including the power to withhold rent until repairs are made.
- On availability and affordability, raise the housing allowance where local costs have outpaced it, and invest in building and maintaining quality housing on base.
- Families should be able to report problems without fear and see them fixed fast. The people who protect us deserve a safe place to come home to.
- I would measure success by conditions on the ground, inspected and reported, not by promises from the companies being paid.
First priorities and experience
- Where I would start: protect pay and benefits from any shutdown, and clear the VA claims backlog with enforceable timelines. Both are solvable now.
- What informs me is a lifetime in a Navy family and twenty years spent fixing 'broken' systems, where I learned that the problem is almost always the process, not the people, and a broken process can be fixed.