While traveling across the country as the Republican National Committee's director for military and veterans engagement, John Vick was struck by the regional staff of Concerned Veterans for America and their connection with their communities and political candidates.
When he heard that the executive director position at the organization was open, Vick jumped to apply. A former enlisted Marine who currently serves as an intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, Vick said he wanted the chance to lead what will be an expansion of the group's priorities and initiatives.
According to Vick, veterans and military families "deserve to be a prominent voice," both at the state and federal level.
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"They have a lot of skin in the game. CVA is the only national grassroots organization that is purpose-built to provide that voice across the spectrum of American governance," Vick said during an interview Wednesday with Military.com in Washington, D.C.
Concerned Veterans for America was established in 2011 as a nonprofit known as Vets for Economic Freedom and later became CVA, a partner organization with Americans for Prosperity, the influential conservative-libertarian group founded by billionaire Charles Koch.
The group has been in the national spotlight since last November, when President Donald Trump nominated Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host and CVA executive director from 2012 to 2016, as his secretary of defense. Other notable connections to the current Trump administration include former CVA senior adviser Darin Selnick, who now holds the job of senior Pentagon adviser, and former CVA Executive Director Dan Caldwell, who led the Trump transition team at the Defense Department.
Hegseth’s time at CVA's helm received scrutiny during the lead-up to his confirmation hearing amid reports of questionable behavior during his term, but he was confirmed in a tie-breaking vote, with Vice President JD Vance providing the final "yes" vote.
Vick said that, with CVA's established network, including its alumni, the time is right to build its priorities beyond what has been a decade-long focus on expanded health care options for veterans and accountability at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
As part of that expansion, CVA last week released its 2025 legislative policy priorities. They include veterans issues but also advocate for economic reform, calling for a review of entitlement programs and the congressional budget process, reducing the national debt, revamping the tax code and deregulation.
The priorities also press for drawing down the U.S. presence in Europe, reducing its participation in NATO to a logistics/support role, and removing all American troops from Iraq and Syria.
And they call for domestic energy production, lifting limits on oil and natural gas production and exports.
"Access to cheap and abundant energy is the bedrock of American prosperity at home. U.S. energy abundance also builds American strength abroad by offering a reliable supply source for our allies and partners while reducing dependence on volatile regions like the Middle East," the document states.
Vick served as a radio operator in the Marine Corps, deploying to Anbar, Iraq, in 2003. He is a 2011 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who earned a master's degree from the Naval War College and deployed to the Horn of Africa in support of special operations forces.
In addition to his work with the Republican National Committee and as a political consultant, he served on the staff at the House Veterans Affairs Committee, a role he said taught him the value of "cross-partisan cooperation."
At an organization that leans heavily right, Vick says people don't always have to agree with what CVA supports, but they may find common ground.
"One of the unique advantages that Concerned Veterans for America enjoys is commonality across a lot of issues -- health care, accountability," Vick said. "When you get into other things that CVA is going to have bold and decisive opinions about, you might not agree ... but we are an organization with a spectrum of engagement that allows us to bring in a lot of people, and we might actually end up changing some minds -- or not."
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