Credible Leaders. All of them.

NOTE TO ETHAN HASTERT: You can serve our country in uniform AND hold office.

As mortar fire and rockets bombarded 1st Lt. Jonathan Paton's Iraq camp, he got an urgent call on his cell phone: He had won re-election.

"There's all this drama going on outside, and this stupid thing started ringing right by me. It was the chair of our county party, and she said, 'You won, you won!'" said Paton, a Republican Arizona state senator who has since been promoted to captain. "I had to pretend everything was fine. I didn't want to sound like I was going to die."

Paton, a 38-year-old intelligence officer in the Army Reserves, is one of 65 state legislators nationwide who pull double duty by serving in the United States military at the same time as they hold elected office, according to a survey obtained by The Associated Press and to be released this week.