ROUND ROCK – A Round Rock veteran’s political ad has gone viral.
The ad is for MJ Hegar, a democrat running for congress. She’s looking to represent Texas District 31, which includes Round Rock, Fort Hood and part of north Austin.
In the video, she uses doors as a metaphor to talk about the obstacles and adversity she's overcome throughout her life. In the beginning, she shares the meaning behind one of her biggest doors.
“I heard the windshield crack and realized I’d been shot,” she said.
This door represented her time as a combat search-and-rescue pilot in Afghanistan -- the time she and her helicopter were shot down.
"I keep [the door] because it's a reminder to me of what could have happened,” Hegar said. "It's a reminder to me that I've got a second chance at life and that I have a responsibility to do something with that."
She and her team released the video Wednesday, and as of Sunday, the video has 1.5 million views on YouTube and more than 22,000 of shares on Facebook. Hegar told KVUE she had a feeling it would do well.
“I hoped it would, yeah,” she said. “We partnered with a really great company that invested time with us for a year, really invested in getting to know us for no fee just shadowed me and the campaign for a year."
She said that video shares important moments in her life from witnessing her dad throw her mom out a glass door to getting doors shut in her face, as she said she sued the Pentagon and fought for women to be able to compete in elite ground combat jobs. That was a door that opened.
She mentioned it all of this in the video to give people an inside look into who she was.
“We felt that it was important to show the whole story because the things that have happened to me or that I’ve done or whatever throughout my whole life have really framed and shaped who I am,” Hegar said.
She said one of those closed doors was from her now opponent, Congressman John Carter, A person she's hopeful she'll beat in this upcoming November election.
KVUE reached out to Congressman Carter's office for a comment and have not heard back.