David Flippo, a Republican congressional candidate in Nevada, inflated his military record multiple times in recent years by claiming he received a Bronze Star “for valor” during his two-decade Air Force career.
Flippo received a Bronze Star in 2004 for his service, but not the Bronze Star with valor, a much rarer distinction that recognizes heroism in direct combat with an enemy. Experts on military awards say such exaggerations are tantamount to lying. The Flippo campaign acknowledged the misrepresentations but downplayed them as “honest mistakes” by staff members.
When the Republican announced his first congressional campaign in 2023, the narrator in his announcement video described the candidate as a “recipient of the Bronze Star that he received for valor.” Flippo lost in the 2024 Republican primary for the competitive district that encompasses Las Vegas, its northern suburbs and large stretches of rural Nevada.
His campaign made the same misrepresentation about his award during this election cycle in at least two fundraising solicitations reviewed by The Washington Post.
Flippo initially announced a run for the same district in 2025. In February 2026, he said in a fundraising email to supporters that he “earned the Bronze Star for valor” after Combat Vets for Congress endorsed his campaign.
He used the same language a week later when he listed among his military career highlights “earning the Bronze Star for valor.”
In March, after Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nevada) announced his retirement, Flippo shifted to run in Amodei’s much more Republican district, which encompasses much of Northern Nevada. The district stretches from Reno to the state’s high desert border with Utah.
After The Post contacted the Flippo campaign on Wednesday, the three-year-old video was deleted from social media. Flippo said his campaign’s video editors “made a mistake” by conflating his Bronze Star with another award he received, the Outstanding Unit Award with Valor, and apologized for “not paying closer attention to the specifics of that ad.” He called the exaggeration “an honest mistake.”
“Three years ago, our video editors made a mistake and tried to combine these two awards for a commercial,” he said. “After realizing this error, our campaign has not used that ad again, and it has not been part of our campaign this election cycle.”
When The Post presented the Flippo campaign with the more recent fundraising emails, the candidate’s spokesperson, Rory McShane, wrote that the campaign “has sent literally hundreds of fundraising solicitations via text messages, email, letter, etc. A copywriter accidentally using old talking points does not a scandal make.”
“Lt. Col. Flippo has already apologized for not proofing the material closer,” McShane wrote and accused The Post of “trying to fabricate a scandal.”
“This was an honest mistake that has been apologized for,” he said.
Experts on military honors — including Doug Sterner, a recipient of two Bronze Stars and one of the nation’s foremost experts on military awards — told The Post that Flippo’s error was “a big deal.”
“It’s pretty sad that this is a multiple-time thing,” said Sterner. “It shows a pattern of deception. It is someone trying to give an impression of their service that is not true.”
The U.S. military issues two versions of the Bronze Star: one with a “V” device denoting valor in combat, and another for commendable job performance on deployments, or “meritorious service” in military parlance.
The Air Force Personnel Center website states that the valor device denotes “an act or acts of heroism by an individual above what is normally expected while engaged in direct combat with an enemy of the United States, or an opposing foreign or armed force, with exposure to enemy hostilities and personal risk.”
The award with valor is far rarer, according to military records, and multiple experts said claiming to have received the Bronze Star with valor when you received the more common award is taboo.
“It amounts to a lie,” Sterner said. “It’s a falsification, a misrepresentation of the award that he received. He did not get an award for heroism.”
Jason Dempsey, a retired Army infantry officer and current fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank focused on national security, called Flippo’s exaggeration “pretty blatant” and an example of the candidate “grasping for unearned valor.”
“It denigrates everybody’s service for folks to promote themselves this way,” Dempsey said. “He apparently missed the training on officership and integrity.”
Flippo’s Air Force service has been central to his political rise.
In a 2025 podcast interview, Flippo said he served in the Air Force for 24 years, from 1985 to 2009, as a maintenance and logistics officer, noting that he was the logistics commander “in charge of standing up the air bases we captured” during the Iraq War. McShane, Flippo’s spokesperson, said the Republican’s wing commander “recommended him for the Bronze Star in 2003 while he was in Iraq.” Flippo received the Bronze Star award in 2004, according to media reports at the time.
The Dayton Daily News wrote in 2004 that Flippo was “honored for his efforts in directing the distribution of over two million gallons of aviation fuel to sustain over 2,700 combat sorties as well as the redistribution of 31 million gallons of fuel to 4,005 strategic airlift missions.”
At the time, Flippo was an instructor at the Air Force Institute of Technology’s School of Systems and Logistics at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton.
Flippo is running in what has been a solidly Republican district. No Democrat has ever represented Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District since its creation after the 1980 Census, and voters in the district backed Donald Trump by 14 percentage points in 2024. But Democrats, buoyed by a national environment that favors the party because of anger at Trump, are watching the race closely. The Democratic nominee is Teresa Benitez-Thompson, the former majority leader in the Nevada State Assembly.
The Republican primary to replace Amodei was crowded, with 13 Republicans running for the seat. Flippo emerged from the primary in part because Trump endorsed him, even though Amodei and other Nevada Republicans favored former state senator James Settelmeyer as his replacement. Amodei was particularly angry that Flippo moved to run in the Northern Nevada districts despite having no ties to the region and having recently run for the Las Vegas-based seat.
“With all due respect Mr. President, Nevada already has five representatives who live in Clark County,” Amodei wrote in response to the Trump endorsement, referring to the state’s most populous county and the home to Las Vegas. “Your endorsement if followed, would make it six out of six.”
Amodei has since refused to endorse Flippo, calling him “not my cup of tea” and saying there was “no way” he would endorse the Republican.
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