Thank You for the Honor of Leading VFRL
The time has come for me to step aside and enable new leadership at VFRL. This decision was a difficult one and has been on my mind for many months. When I started Veterans For Responsible Leadership as a Facebook group in 2017, it was little more than a few of us posting anti-Trump articles other people had written.
There was so much energy. We had to do something, so we did. When we became a political entity we had no idea how to run a PAC, no coherent plan to stop Trump and authoritarianism, and no resources. The first election cycle we participated in, 2018, saw us raise and spend what felt like a massive sum of 5,000 dollars. But we weren’t going to give up. We learned from our mistakes when we made them and we grew. We brought amazing new team members on and watched them flourish.
This year we raised and spent over a million. And we made a difference. Without VFRL, Jared Golden would almost certainly not have been reelected to Congress in Maine. We blasted ads into North Carolina and Pennsylvania. We had billboards in Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, and Maine. Despite the final result, the ads we made had tens of millions of views in those two states in zip codes surrounding military bases and viral views from around the country. Our strategy: to point out that Trump is unfit to be the commander-in-chief was not wrong, or unhelpful, but it was not enough to win.
The next 4 years will be fraught with difficulty for those of us who believe service is a privilege, a rising tide lifts all boats, and honor, decency, and courage matter. We will, however, pass this test. America has had bad Presidents before, and it will again. As citizens our duty, a disrespectful loyalty, is clear. Though I’m not sure where my next steps will take me, I know I will continue to fight for the America I want for my children, and owe to my forefathers. I am stepping back from my role, but I will always be part of the VFRL team and in this fight with you.
Bobby Jones and Ken Harbaugh will be leading this organization moving forward, and I expect them to quickly eclipse the successes I’ve had leading it. They bring with them new connections, new enthusiasm, and new strategic vision. All of that is critical to the organization’s future success. Bobby is a retired Naval Officer with an unmatched enthusiasm for pro-democracy work, based in Georgia, a critical state in any electoral college math. Bobby will head the PAC activities and focus on electoral victories. Ken, who many of you know, has been hard at work in this space for close to a decade and will be leading efforts to engage voters in the current media environment, which has shifted over the last several years and was a critical piece in Trump’s return to office.
Founding VFRL, working with all of you, and running an anti-Donald Trump PAC and group of veterans has been a privilege. I am lucky to have been able to do so, and to work with all of you. I am fortunate and blessed to have a voice in this struggle.
Being an American, after all, is a privilege I did not earn through any personal merit, but it is one I will never stop trying to live up to, and I will never not be thankful for. Thank you for all that you’ve done and thank you for all that you will do.
Yours in service,
Dan Barkhuff
