PATTERSON HEIGHTS, Pennsylvania — When Sean Parnell received a call asking him if he would be interested in speaking at the Republican National Convention, the Pittsburgh native didn’t even pause.
“There wasn’t even a moment’s hesitation for me,” he told the Washington Examiner. “I come from a family that is sort of split down the middle politically. My whole life, watching conventions has always been woven into the fabric of our family.”
Parnell, a decorated Army veteran who served in combat on the battlefields in Afghanistan, is running as a Republican against incumbent Democrat Rep. Conor Lamb for the 17th Congressional District. It’s a suburban house seat that begins six miles outside of Pittsburgh and stretches northwest to Beaver and Butler counties.
Ten years ago, Parnell said he was driving home from Fort Drum after just being outprocessed from the Army. “I had just finished up rehabbing a traumatic brain injury. I was medically retired. I intended to go into the Army and make it a career, I intended to join the Special Forces and try out for Delta and do all that stuff for 20 years, and all of a sudden I have to pull out before my time. I had no idea what I was going to do.”
“Having the opportunity to speak at [a convention] is really unbelievable to me and humbling. When I think of where I was 10 years ago from today. … I was just broken. This journey to here has been one I never foresaw,” said Parnell. “It’s this country that gives us the opportunity to live a life like that if you work hard enough.”
Most members of Congress don’t get prime-time speaking slots at national conventions, and candidates who haven’t been elected yet are even rarer. So it’s surprising that both candidates in this congressional election are getting speaking time at their national conventions. During the Democratic National Convention, Lamb appeared with 16 other “rising stars” in a collage of brief videos from the areas they represent, with Lamb’s video featuring Pittsburgh in the background.
The 17th Congressional District was redrawn in 2018 ahead of the midterm elections because the Democratic majority in the state Supreme Court threw out the lines drawn by Republican state legislators after the 2010 Census, arguing that it violated the Free and Equal Elections clause of the state constitution. The district now includes the densely populated upper-middle-class neighborhood of Mt. Lebanon (where Lamb grew up and still lives) as well as the working-class, rural, and middle-class towns of Beaver and Butler counties.
Lamb squared off with a fellow member of Congress, Republican Keith Rothfus, for his win in the 2018 Democratic wave election. Trump won that district by 10,000 votes in 2016. Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican who was also on the ticket that year, won the area by slightly more.
The 39-year-old Parnell said his journey to the Republican National Convention began, like a lot of other people’s, with bumps in the road — not just in his career but also politically.
His first choice for president in 2016 was Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. After a trip to South Carolina to volunteer for the Rubio campaign, Parnell noticed that Rubio’s campaign, heavily staffed with volunteers, lost there to Trump’s, which had basically none. Parnell went back to Pittsburgh and did his homework, listening to people in his home state about why they supported the brash New Yorker. He never looked back.
“There was just something in the air that was intangible. And at that point, I started being a supporter of [Trump], and I’ve never looked back,” Parnell said. Three years later, during Trump’s speech at the annual Shale Insights Conference in Pittsburgh, he challenged Parnell to run for office. “Yeah, he called me out, basically, to run,” said Parnell, laughing at the moment. “I wasn’t even there. I’d never met him, still have never met him, and at that point, I had never talked to him.”
Parnell was in South Carolina at the time, giving a service dog to a veteran. “My mom calls me all angry. She had been texting me over and over and over again, but I was working and didn’t have my phone on. But I look down and see the 50 missed calls, and I was thinking, ‘Oh my gosh. There must be a death in the family or something,'” he said.
“I pick up the phone, and she’s yelling at me. She’s like, ‘Sean!’ I’m like, ‘What, Ma? What?’ She said, ‘Are you running for Congress?’ And I said, ‘No, Mom, no!’” he said, and then there was silence. “And she goes, ‘Well, the president says you’re running for Congress.'”
His mother sent him a video clip of the moment, and Parnell said it turned his life upside down. “Two weeks later, I was running, and I have been doing this ever since. This was never really in my plan. People have asked me before over the years to run, and I always politely declined. But when the president calls you out to do it, you do it.”
Political analysts in Washington say the race will end in a “likely Democratic” victory. But last month, Parnell outraised Lamb significantly, a sign that perhaps this race is closer than they predict.
Parnell said authority figures telling him he can’t succeed at something speaks to how motivated he is to show them they are wrong. “I am who I am,” he said. “I’m not a politician. I am a nonconformist in every way. And I think that perspective was shaped in me when I was a kid and bullied.”
“I think that was the reason why I ended up joining the military and see myself as somebody who wanted to protect, protect and serve, because I know what it feels like to be bullied and victimized,” he said. “There’s a pundit class that says things can’t be done. That’s rocket fuel for me because all my life, people have told me that you can’t do it.”
“I failed Ranger School. A lot of people don’t know this, but I failed Ranger School the first time. The brigade commander tried to kick me out, ‘You’re out of here, Ranger. You’re done,’ he told me,” Parnell explained. “I said, ‘No, sir, I’m not.’ ‘Yeah, you are. Pack your bags. Get the hell out of here.’ I said, ‘Sir, I’m not packing my bags. I’m not going anywhere.’ We got into it for a little while.”
Eventually, the commander, exasperated by Parnell’s stubbornness, told him to get his bags and go stay in the barracks and start all over again with the next class. “And I made it through. I made it through Ranger School the second time.”
Parnell said when he was asked to speak on the opening night of the Republican convention, they gave him control of the message he wanted to convey:
Parnell has run a very bottom-up grassroots campaign. Here in Beaver County, he was attending a law enforcement veterans event, where he picked up the third and final endorsement from the local Fraternal Order of Police lodge located within the district.
Parnell heads to Washington on Monday to give his speech live that evening.
Disclosure: Brad Todd, who co-authored The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics with Salena Zito in 2018, is a strategist for Parnell’s campaign.
