Last week I got a text from Ammar Campa-Najjar out of the blue. The two-time Democratic congressional candidate from San Diego County wanted to let me know that he had just been commissioned as an officer in the US Navy Reserves, assigned to the Pacific Fleet.

What an unexpected turn.

You turn your pain into a goal, he told me when we spoke Monday. Now this story is closed.

When I last reached out to Campa-Najjar, a San Diego native, 29 was on the rebound after a hard-fought, unsuccessful 2018 campaign to wrest control of California’s 50th Congressional District, a traditional GOP stronghold to Republican U.S. Representative Duncan Hunter. a former marine and scion of a local political dynasty.

Hunter kept his seat even though he was under federal indictment for stealing a quarter of a million dollars from his campaign. He was later sentenced to 11 months in prison and pardoned by former President Trump before we had a chance to see him behind bars, which infuriated even conservatives.

The 2018 campaign will live in infamy as Hunter’s openly racist accusations against Campa-Najjar, who converted from Islam to Christianity in high school, made national news.

The attacks against Campa-Najjar, the son of a Mexican-American mother and Palestinian-American father, with whom he lived in Gaza for four years as a child, had a similar flavor to the birth conspiracy against Barack Obama, who was born in Hawaii to a mother from Kansas and a father from Kenya, and once lived in Indonesia as a child.

Hunter warned that his opponent was a threat to national security and attempted to infiltrate Congress. The dire anti-Muslim rhetoric was exacerbated just before the 2018 election when Hunter’s father, a former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, organized a bogus security briefing in parliament.

USS

Midway, the aircraft carrier that is now a museum in San Diego.

Hunter Sr. invoked Campa-Najjar’s grandfather, an alleged Palestinian terrorist

,

who was killed by Israeli commandos sixteen years before Campa-Najjar was born, and his father, who

Palestine Liberation Organization PLO

and was widely recognized as a promoter of peace with Israel, according to the San Diego Union

–

bleachers.

Mind you, at that point Campa-Najjar, now 34, had already worked in the Obama administration, which required

to the FBI Secret Service

security clearance.

The attacks immediately ramped up again in 2020, when Campa-Najjar again sought the seat. Far-right billionaire and former congressman Darrell Issa had stepped in and recruited then-President Trump to shoot a pesky ad accusing Campa-Najjar of being anti-Israel and a dangerous socialist. Again Campa-Najjar made a respectable performance but lost.

Was the young man done with politics at that point? Hey what not. In 2022, he ran for mayor of Chula Vista, the border town

Where

he attended middle school and high school. With a relatively large war chest, and in a city where Democrats outnumbered Republicans, he still lost. Questions about his actual whereabouts and lack of previous interest in the city’s garbage collection problems worked against him.

Unlike the political battlefield, the military is a place where Americans from unusual backgrounds like Campa-Najjar can mesh well together.

He told me he had always wanted to serve in the army, even trying to enlist at 17 before his mother put a stop to it. Now he has added one more detail

S

to his only backstory in America:

receiving his naval commission on the Midway, the site of the most scandalous

politics

attack on him.

I give him huge credit for his ability

as a candidate

to stay focused and unbowed by ugly personal attacks that could push a less mission-driven person out of politics.

That ability to tenaciously stick to his conversation topics

should

make him a perfect fit for the Navys Public Affairs Office, where he is assigned.

But given his very recent past as a political partisan, I wondered how the feelings he might have about US military misadventures like the invasion of Iraq or even Vietnam

w

War could play a role. Campa-Najjar didn’t feel like it.

I am 1000% focused on serving my unit and leading our sailors, he said. I trust chain of command and oversight. My role will be to fulfill the duties arising from the oath of office I have taken. (As a reservist, he can still keep his day job as a consultant to small businesses and government agencies.)

Campa-Najjar seems relieved to leave current politics behind. “I scratched that itch,” he told me.

The military does not have the luxury of getting involved in these cultural disputes in an attempt to divide us, he continued. While some people have seen my heritage and my background as an obligation, the Navy says these are not obligations, they are assets. Mastering the Arabic language, speaking Spanish fluently and having lived in the Middle East, my cultural competence, gives us a strategic advantage, he said. My Arabic is actually more fluent than my Spanish.

I wish Campa-Najjar was a little less careful during conversations. For example, he did not want to discuss his personal relationship with Democratic U.S. Representative Sara Jacobs

m

he met in 2018 when they were both running for Congress, and both lost. Jacobs, the granddaughter of Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs, entered and won again in 2022, now representing parts of San Diego and the Eastern Suburbs.

As for the end of Campa-Najjar’s political aspirations, I am sure he is telling the truth.

At least for now.

@robinkabcarian