During his first Senate campaign in Nevada last year, Sam Brown, a retired Army captain who said last week that he will challenge Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) in a key battleground state, was courting voters at a closed-door candidate luncheon hosted by the state’s largest Republican women’s club.

It was just weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022, and Brown, midway through his introductory remarks, made reference to the brewing conflict with a suggestion that he acknowledged ran against the bipartisan foreign policy consensus. 

“At a time where there’s so much domestic unease on so many issues, the media and our politicians want to turn our eyes to places like Ukraine or Afghanistan,” the Army veteran told members of Southern Hills Republican Women, according to an audio recording obtained by Jewish Insider on Thursday. “I think maybe where we spend on these foreign issues is a place we need to cut.”

While he recognized that his position was “not popular,” Brown, who was badly wounded while deployed in Afghanistan, insisted that the U.S. was in need of a course correction. “America has been the police force in the world for so long. But right now, Americans need help,” he explained. “Less than one year after pulling out of Afghanistan in such a disastrous, horrific way,” he said later, expanding on his initial comments, “we have war hawks out of D.C. trying to push us into another conflict.”

By embracing a non-interventionist approach to foreign policy, Brown was, at least privately, aligning himself with a growing coalition of isolationist lawmakers such as Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), an Iraq War veteran who has opposed funding for Ukraine. Still, Brown has refrained from endorsing such positions publicly — even as he has sharply criticized continued spending to support Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russia.

In written comments shared with JI last week, Brown, 39, would not confirm whether he is now open to cutting aid to Ukraine, which has become a defining fault line in Republican foreign policy conversations. “There needs to be more accountability on every dollar spent,” he argued, accusing President Joe Biden of failing to lead on the issue. “We need to know what mission success is, and how much it costs to get there. Endless wars have endless costs, and I’m against both.”

A spokesperson for Brown’s campaign did not respond to a request for clarification about his comments at the Republican club event during the last election.

While the debate over Ukraine is creating divisions over foreign policy within the Republican Party, Brown’s views are currently in the minority. Two separate amendments calling for cutting aid to Ukraine in the defense spending bill were rejected by a majority of House Republicans last week — and all House Democrats.

As a small but growing contingent of right-wing populists seeks to wrest control from the GOP’s traditionally hawkish establishment wing, Brown’s candidacy will be a key test of whether his heterodox views have larger purchase in one of the biggest battleground states in the country. His candidacy against Rosen has been championed by national Republican leadership.

Brown, for his part, indicated that he is uninterested in such disputes, emphasizing a commitment to more practical concerns echoed in his campaign announcement. “Congress can be divided and argue about a lot of things,” he told JI, “but peace through strength as an end-goal should always be prioritized over party politics.”

“You’ve got the J.D. Vances of the world and then you’ve got the Lindsey Grahams of the world, and it’s like, where do you kind of square it?,” said a Republican strategist who has discussed foreign policy with Brown, citing two senators on opposing sides of the ongoing GOP foreign policy schism. “I think Brown is somewhere in the middle.”

Brown has remained consistent in voicing strong reservations over American involvement in foreign entanglements. His reasons for doing so are uniquely personal. During his first tour of duty in Afghanistan, in 2008, Brown was set on fire by an improvised explosive device that burned 30% of his body, including his face. The traumatic experience has, in many ways, informed his cautiousness in weighing the impact of global conflicts against American interests.

“It’s pretty clear that he’s a living, breathing reminder of the costs of the 2000 wars, and he said a lot about the folly of endless wars,” the GOP strategist, who spoke with Brown during his first campaign in 2022, told JI recently. “But when we asked him about whether his policies were in line with folks like Rand Paul,” a libertarian-leaning Republican senator from Kentucky who is among the most high-profile non-interventionists in the Senate, “he doubled down and then tripled down on citing China and the need to confront the threat to the U.S.”

Brown confirmed that he is in favor of taking an “active role in international relations,” rather than risking what he characterized as a global leadership vacuum that American adversaries are eager to fill. “We see it right now with an emboldened China seizing power internationally and testing the resolve of the Biden administration,” he said.

His interest in addressing other top Republican foreign policy priorities, meanwhile, can occasionally betray a lack of urgency, the strategist told JI. During their conversation last cycle, for instance, Brown was, largely in keeping with the rest of his party, strongly opposed to a nuclear deal with Iran. “But he wasn’t as effusive about it, if you want to call it that, like a lot of other candidates,” the strategist noted.

The Nevada Republican has, on the other hand, been particularly outspoken when it comes to Ukraine and the American role in the conflict, which “seems to be ever-evolving,” he warned in his comments to JI. “That’s setting us up for involvement in another endless war, and prolonged wars threaten our military preparedness for all future threats. As a veteran, I’ve seen the horrors of those kinds of wars and the devastating impact that Washington bureaucrats have on undefined military campaigns.”

“The U.S. Senate should be holding Joe Biden accountable, demanding answers and a strategic plan,” Brown elaborated, before taking a swipe at the Democratic incumbent he is now plotting to unseat in 2024. “But we don’t see Jacky Rosen stepping up and asking the tough questions of her party leader.”

In a statement to JI last week, a spokesperson for Rosen’s campaign, Erika Herrera, charged that Brown had no credible alternative to the current Ukraine strategy embraced by members of both parties. “Brown has repeatedly attacked American aid to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia’s unprovoked invasion and he’s criticized American sanctions against Putin’s regime,” Herrera said. “Senator Rosen has always been clear that Ukraine must win this war. Cutting crucial bipartisan aid would weaken those efforts, embolden Putin and threaten democracy around the world.” 

It remains to be seen if Ukraine will become a key issue in the race. Rosen, a first-term incumbent, has frequently worked with Republicans on bipartisan foreign policy legislation, even as she is now a top GOP target in the general election — one of a handful of pivotal contests that could determine the balance of power in the Senate.

Brown, who placed a distant second in last year’s primary, was endorsed last week by Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), the chairman of the Senate Republicans campaign arm, in a strategic effort to avoid what could be a bitter nominating contest. In next year’s June 11 primary, Brown is facing Jim Marchant, a hard-right election denier who lost a bid for secretary of state in 2022, and other potential candidates have expressed interest in entering the race as well.

But while Brown is favored by the GOP establishment, a potentially significant number of Jewish and pro-Israel Republicans are expected to remain loyal to Rosen, a 65-year-old Jewish Democrat who is among the most prominent supporters of Israel on Capitol Hill. In March, she won a crucial endorsement from AIPAC’s bipartisan political action committee, which helped clinch support from conservative donors aligned with AIPAC’s long-standing allegiance to so-called “friendly incumbents” up for reelection.

A top Republican donor who is affiliated with AIPAC confirmed he would never “send any money” to Brown “while a Democrat is pro-Israel.”

“That’s clearly what we have with Jacky,” the donor, who is based in the Midwest and asked to remain anonymous to protect his privacy, said of the first former synagogue president to serve in the upper chamber. The bipartisan pro-Israel community, he told JI recently, “will be supporting Jacky, as we always have.”

Notably, even Brown had nothing negative to say about Rosen’s record on Israel. “The more allies that Israel has in Congress, the better both our nations are,” he said when asked if he would draw any contrasts between their respective approaches. “Historically, our alliance with Israel hasn’t been a partisan issue.”

Despite his aversion to U.S. spending abroad, Brown cast himself as a firm supporter of the Jewish state. “Israel is one of our most important allies,” he wrote in his comments to JI last week. “More than any other nation in the region, the United States shares with Israel an uncompromising adherence to democratic values and a desire for peace. And at the core of our relationship is a shared history that transcends politics; it’s rooted in the shared values of our faiths.”

“It’s important,” he stressed, “that the United States continues to stand steadfast in support of Israel and does not waiver in our commitments.”

Brown alleged, however, that it has become “far too common to see” Democratic lawmakers “criticizing and threatening” the U.S. alliance with Israel “as a wedge issue on campaigns to raise dollars from extremists.”

“We know what the dangerous consequences would be, if some Democrats got their way and the United States backed out of our special relationship with Israel,” he said. “As a senator, I won’t let that happen.”