The name Jim Wood appears on the party certification documents for the three Republican Party nominees for Waynesboro City Council.
And, yes, in case you were wondering, we’re talking about that Jim Wood, the city’s vice mayor who got himself and the city into the national news headlines last year in the fallout over his use of a homophobic slur to denigrate Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Augusta Free Press obtained the documents for Dave Goetze, the Republican nominee in Ward A, Will Flory, the Republican nominee in Ward B, and Jeremy Sloat, the Republican nominee for the at-large seat, through a public-records request.
Wood provided his signature to the ballot documents for each of the three candidates in his role as the chairman of the Waynesboro Republican Committee.
Jim Wood archives
- Waynesboro vice mayor hits Buttigieg with gay slur after asking for federal money
- Waynesboro vice mayor defends ‘Pete Buttplug’ slur of Pete Buttigieg
- Waynesboro Vice Mayor Jim Wood offers half-hearted apology for ‘Pete Buttplug’ slur
- Waynesboro mayor rebukes Jim Wood on ‘Pete Buttplug’ slur: ‘No place in our City’
- Pete Buttigieg is aware that Waynesboro’s vice mayor called him ‘Pete Buttplug’
- City Council members, city residents, urge Waynesboro Vice Mayor Jim Wood to resign
- Waynesboro Republicans cast doubt, then joke about attack on Pelosi
- Waynesboro: A vote for Jim Wood for City Council is a vote for Jan. 6
Wood, the city’s vice mayor, called Buttigieg “ol’ Pete Buttplug” on a 2023 Facebook podcast, in the context of addressing the federal response to a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
The talk-show slur came two days after Wood’s name appeared with others from Waynesboro City Council on a letter formally signed by Mayor Lana Williams addressed to Buttigieg asking the transportation secretary to give his backing for a federal grant for a project to connect Waynesboro to the Claudius Crozet Blue Ridge Tunnel.
In the wake of the controversy, Ward C Councilman Kenny Lee formally called on Wood, who had been a member of the City Council for just six weeks at the time, to resign the vice-mayor post, and the City Council’s at-large member, Terry Short, did that one better, publicly asking Wood to resign his seat on City Council.
Wood survived the firestorm after issuing a half-hearted written apology that referenced “constant political attacks and threats on me by certain groups (that) have been nonstop since the election,” but he ended his podcast, and deleted years of archives.
Among the archives that Wood tried to run away from was a live video from Jan. 6, 2021, in which Wood offered his thoughts on the attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump, telling his viewers, “I’m on the side of the patriots who marched on the Capitol today. … I wish I could have been there today.”
Another of Wood’s now-deleted podcasts was one from Nov. 2, 2022, in which Wood tried to cast the politically motivated hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as a lovers spat gone wrong.
“The best dad joke I’ve heard in a while has been floating around today, said right before that incident, you know, Nancy Pelosi, she texted Paul to say, I hope you’re not drinking and driving. And the reply was, No, I’m just staying at home getting hammered,” Wood said on that now-deleted podcast.
It’s fair to wonder out loud if Wood, signing off on the three candidates for City Council as the Republican Party chair, is trying to recast the City Council with like minds.
For example, we have Goetze, the Ward A candidate, who is the vice president of research at the North Carolina-based Electoral Education Foundation, which, you can tell from his party affiliation and the group’s name what the focus is there.
This Electoral Education Foundation outfit was founded by Hal Weatherman, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in North Carolina, whose campaign website lists among his priorities “men out of women’s sports,” “Donald J. Trump,” “deporting illegals” and “armed guards in schools.”
Weatherman is running on the North Carolina GOP state ticket alongside Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee for governor and Holocaust-denier who, among other things, thinks feminism “is watered by the devil, and is harvested and sold by his minions,” that the civil rights movement was a “communist plot,” and that the survivors of the 2018 mass shooting at a Florida high school are “spoiled little bastards” and “media prosti-tots.”
People who travel in those circles and traffic in that kind of nonsense would seem to fit in well with a guy in Jim Wood who wished he had been at the Capitol for the insurrection, made light of a hammer attack on an elderly man by a guy who broke into a home thinking he was going to kill the Democratic House Speaker, and then, well, whatever Wood calling Pete Buttigieg “ol’ Pete Buttplug” was supposed to represent, aside from Wood just being a dick.
That’s the news here: Jim Wood is on the ballot again. Vote accordingly.
Video: Jim Wood is throwing his political weight around
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Chris Graham
