Glenn Nye touts duty in combat zones to sway military voters

VIRGINIA BEACH

It's a Thursday night in September, and two men are at a gun range on Virginia Beach Boulevard.

"You want to shoot the bad guy or the accuracy target?" Glenn Nye asks a companion.

Practicing with a 9 mm Beretta pistol relaxes Nye, taking his mind off the stress of his first run for public office. The 34-year-old calls it "noisy but therapeutic."

After a decade working for the U.S. government abroad, the former foreign service officer returned home from Iraq in November to run for Congress against Republican incumbent Thelma Drake.

Solid fundraising and upbeat partisan poll numbers have Democrats encouraged about Nye's chance for an upset. He's tailored his campaign to military voters in the 2nd District, stressing the link between his State Department experience in combat zones - most recently Afghanistan and Iraq - and military missions.

Nye's call for an exit strategy in Iraq, where he worked for most of 2007, is a major part of his campaign. He says Iraqis need to be forced to take responsibility for the country.

His positions are sometimes more general than specific and often are similar to Drake's. For example, Nye opposed the financial bailout, which Drake voted against. After opposing offshore drilling, which Drake supports, Nye now is open to idea. Both agree the federal budget is too big and favor extension of the Bush tax cuts. He says he's for "pragmatic" health care reform aimed specifically at making sure children are insured.

Nye portrays himself as an agent for change, often evoking former Gov. Mark Warner as a model for bipartisan work.

"My job was never to serve a party but to solve a problem," he said.

Friends say that approach fits his character.

"He doesn't make decisions quickly," said Peter Van Geertruyden, a former classmate of Nye's who's helping with his campaign. "He's the type of guy that will study the hell out of an issue and won't just say, 'What are the Democrats or Republicans doing?' "

On a recent Saturday, canvassing in Virginia Beach's College Park neighborhood, Nye's challenges and advantages were clear. Behind several doors were families who considered themselves personal friends and supporters of Drake's. They knew the congresswoman from her days selling real estate.

Others, mainly young voters, reacted as if Nye were a long-lost favorite cousin.

An enthusiastic Keith Tamariz said he was tired of Republicans and planned to vote for Nye and Sen. Barack Obama. Nye could "absolutely" put a sign his in his yard and Tamariz was interested in volunteering on the campaign.

"The only way that you can get better is if they want to give you a hug," Nye said, walking away from the house, opening his arms in a mock embrace.

Bethany Metzgar, an Old Dominion University student, was starstruck.

"Are you with Glenn Nye?" she gasped.

"Yes," he said, "I'm actually Glenn Nye."

When he left the porch, a muffled squeal of delight came from behind the storm door.

"That's a new thing," Nye said, slightly embarrassed. "I think it's since we went on TV."

Despite spending his adult life abroad, Nye grew up in Norfolk, attending Norfolk Academy from kindergarten through high school. His father, Glenn Nye II, was a cardiologist in Norfolk for two decades before retiring to Montana. His grandfather, William Jordan, started W.M. Jordan, one of the state's biggest construction companies.

For Nye, who is unmarried, running for Congress is his full-time occupation. He's most comfortable talking about foreign policy, his passion since high school. He was president of Norfolk Academy's International Relations club and active in the Model United Nations program, an academic simulation of global diplomacy.

In college, Nye traveled to foreign countries with his father on medical missions for Physicians for Peace, a nonprofit group.

"Even in high school, he was worldly in international issues," Van Geertruyden said.

Nye has a knack for foreign languages. He entertained Norfolk Academy classmates by translating pop songs, such as MC Hammer's hit "U Can't Touch This," into German. Nye also learned Albanian in a five-month crash course prior to a State Department assignment in Macedonia.

After high school, he attended Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, where friends remember his organizational ability.

"He'd be the one who'd say, 'Hey folks, let's put together a softball team!' " said Bob Gerber, who was in Nye's Foreign Service training.

Nye graduated in 1996 and began a series of jobs overseas, starting at a development bank in London. Bored with banking after two years, he was accepted by the State Department and became a foreign service officer. Later, he worked in Afghanistan helping oversee elections, and in Iraq, where he worked on job creation for USAID.

His first Foreign Service assignment was in Macedonia, where he said he experienced "the most significant event of my life."

It's a two-part story that Nye mentions often during the campaign and in TV ads. An account of it appears in some campaign literature under the headline: "The True Story of How Glenn Nye Saved 27 American Lives."

When armed Albanian rebels took over part of Macedonia in 2001, 26 people with American and Macedonian citizenship were stuck behind insurgent lines, according to nomination documents for the State Department Superior Honor Award, which he received.

Nye, working out of the U.S. Embassy in Skopje, Macedonia, contacted the mayor of an Albanian village by cell phone and convinced him to organize Americans to be evacuated during a two-day cease-fire. The evacuation was successful.

Nye acknowledged that, although the situation was deteriorating, Americans lives were not in immediate danger.

Around the same time, Nye also helped arrange the rescue of one American who'd been taken hostage. Again using local political contacts, Nye pressured insurgents to release the man. Two weeks later, they did.

"He basically single-handedly had to secure the safety of any American citizen in what was rapidly turning into a de facto war zone," said Dan Grant, a college roommate of Nye's who was working for the State Department in nearby Kosovo when Nye helped evacuate the Americans.

Nye contributed to Grant's unsuccessful run this year in the Democratic primary for a Texas congressional seat.

"He called in favors, called political bigwigs in every ethnic group," Grant said. "Aside from it being the requirement of his job, he really took it as being his moral job."

Aaron Applegate, (757) 222-5122, aaron.applegate@pilotonline.com