In a Tennessee Republican primary where every candidate is leaning on their military credentials, one state representative hopeful built his brand around his Marine Corps service. Running in Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s district, Brian Stewart’s campaign website, mailers, and social media emphasize his time in uniform as proof of discipline and loyalty, and a campaign promise to “be a watchdog for military families.”Marine Corps records and interviews with military experts tell a different story. Stewart’s service ended before he completed his reserve service obligation because of “failure to participate.” He left the Marines as a private following a possible demotion. He is ineligible to reenlist, and the Marine Corps has stated that “the character of his service was incongruent with Marine Corps standards.”Stewart is running for state representative in Tennessee’s District 45, which covers Sumner County, just north of Nashville. Stewart’s campaign identifies him as a conservative businessman, Marine, and community leader.
“It would be the equivalent of saying that you were a college graduate when you in fact had flunked out after your freshman year,” Mark Cancian, a retired colonel in the Marine Corps Reserves and Senior Adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner. “It is misleading, even though you had attended college.”Military records, obtained exclusively by the Washington Examiner, show that Stewart enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves in October 1998 and left in August 2000, serving for less than 36 months. The report lists his character of service as “under other than honorable conditions.”“That’s the lowest discharge you can get, short of being court-martialed,” Cancian explained. “You have to really have had unsatisfactory service to get a discharge at that low level.”The Marine Corps issued a statement to the Washington Examiner about the nature of the candidate’s discharge: “Stewart’s premature discharge and rank at separation indicate that the character of his service was incongruent with Marine Corps standards. Due to privacy and administrative regulations, further details are not releasable.”
