WASHINGTON — Todd Lally should be getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan. Instead, he’s running for Congress.

“After I won the primary, my guys told me, ‘We’ll fight over there, you keep fighting here,’ ” said Lally, a lieutenant colonel in the Kentucky Air National Guard and the Republican candidate in the state’s 3rd District. “Part of me feels like I’m sitting on the bench.”

Lally, a C-130 aircraft commander, is one in a group of veterans — 18 who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, one who served in the Horn of Africa — that claims a unique and underrepresented view of national security issues among lawmakers.

While candidates like Lally are focused on their counterparts overseas, voters aren’t. The stagnant economy and high unemployment rates continue to be the main discussion points on the campaign trail, sometimes to the frustration of the war veterans.

A September Gallup poll showed the economy rated as the top election issue among likely voters this fall. The war in Afghanistan rated seventh, just after immigration and slightly above environmental issues.

“When we have a veterans forum, the wars and related issues are about all we talk about,” Lally said. “I enjoy those, but you can’t go to an automotive workers rally and talk about that. You have to answer their concerns.”

Jon Soltz, co-founder and chair of VoteVets.org, a left-leaning political action committee focused on veteran candidates, said the shift in attitudes has made running a successful campaign more difficult for recent war heroes.

Not only are they frequently unfamiliar with fundraising and political maneuvering, they also have to prove their knowledge base expands beyond their military background.

“But if you’re someone who is well-rounded, voters still respect someone who has fought for their country,” he said. “So these guys we’re backing now are not one-issue candidates. These are candidates with a progressive message, who can talk about jobs and the economic stimulus.”

Kieran Lalor, founder of the conservative PAC Iraq Vets for Congress, agreed that fewer “military-only” veterans are entering Congressional races this year. But he said the pedigree of a military background is still a valuable political asset in any race.

“Right now, voters are saying they don’t know who to trust, and there’s an anti-incumbent message,” said Lalor, who ran for a New York Congressional seat in 2008. “These guys have already put their neck on the line for this country.”

Lalor said even with the smaller number of veteran candidates from recent wars, “I think we have a real chance to be in the double digits after the election is over.”

Four veterans who deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan serve in the House: Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa.; Rep. John Boccieri, D-Ohio; Rep. Duncan D. Hunter, R-Calif.; and Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., has also spent time in Iraq performing legal duties as a colonel in the Air Force Reserve.

Three other lawmakers — Rep. Chris Carney, D-Pa.; Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa.; and Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn. — deployed overseas in support of Operation Enduring Freedom but never entered Afghanistan.

Experts on brain injury are trying to take what they've learned on the football field and apply it to the battlefield.

That will mean identifying military personnel who have suffered a concussion, and forcing them to rest until their brains have a chance to heal.

The approach is similar to what happens in the NFL — players who suffer a concussion may be benched for a week or more, even if they object.

Brain injury experts say mandatory rest and evaluation are even more important in combat because of new discoveries about the way energy from an explosion appears to reach the brain and cause damage. The goal is to prevent fighters who have already had one concussion from suffering another while their brain is still especially vulnerable to damage.

That's what happened to Jake Mathers, a Marine, during one seven-month tour in Iraq. Mathers got his first concussion during a firefight near Ramadi. He was firing his weapon when an enemy truck packed with artillery shells and gasoline exploded not far from him.

"All I saw was sparks, and then I went out like a light," says Mathers. "I woke up and my nose was bleeding, my ears was bleeding, my tear ducts were bleeding." Mathers' body was intact, though. So he stayed with his unit and suffered more concussions.

"There were several," he says. "An RPG hit my truck one time. I got knocked out. Another time, we're going down this street called Ice Cream — probably the worst street in Ramadi ... and one of the guys shot an RPG and it hit the hood of our vehicle and blew up."

Mathers says he can't remember how many concussions he had during his seven-month tour, and he has trouble remembering a lot of things now that he's back home in Monroe, La.

"I'll lose my pack of smokes like three or four times a day, and I'll buy different packs of smokes 'cause I forget that I bought them," he says. "Or sometimes I'll be driving down the road and forget where I'm going or lose my car keys, cell phone."

Mathers also has headaches, nightmares and problems sleeping.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have produced a lot of people like Mathers — people who had multiple concussions in a short period of time, says David Hovda, who directs the Brain Injury Research Center at UCLA. Each injury is usually the result of a relatively small explosion, he says.

The blast can produce "a concussive wave, or a blast wave, that actually moves the head and body very violently and that can, in fact, cause a concussion," Hovda says.

Brain scans show that for days or even weeks after an injury like this, the brain's metabolism slows down, which leaves some cells starved for energy, he says.

"During the time when this metabolism is altered," Hovda says, "the brain not only is dysfunctional, but it's also extremely vulnerable, so that if it's exposed to another mild injury, which normally you'd be able to tolerate really well, now there can be long-term devastating consequences."

It's the second hit or the third that often does the lasting damage, Hovda says. So Hovda and others have been urging the military to act more like the NFL and order troops off the field when they've had a head injury.

That message seems to be getting through.