In 2014, Montana voters elected Ryan Zinke to the House of Representatives, marking a distinctive addition to the legislative body. As a veteran who had dedicated nearly thirty years to the Navy’s most elite special operations unit, Zinke represented a rarity on Capitol Hill—the first former SEAL to win a House seat and only the second to enter Congress in any capacity. According to Zinke himself, his military background generated considerable curiosity among fellow legislators. His arrival coincided with a period when the SEALs enjoyed unprecedented public fascination, largely stemming from SEAL Team Six’s high-profile mission that eliminated Osama bin Laden in 2011, an operation that had dramatically elevated the unit’s reputation for precision and lethality in the national consciousness.
