A vote for Jim Wood in Waynesboro is a vote for the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrectionists, and, sorry if that hurts anybody’s feelings, but it’s the truth.
Wood, the manager of a Staunton gun store, first came to be known in local political circles in 2020 as one of the louder voices among the cranks pushing the city to become a Second Amendment sanctuary, who then decided to run for local office after Waynesboro City Council shot down a pro-sanctuary resolution, as it should have.
He fell short in the May 2020 campaign, and of course on his 2022 campaign website, he makes it clear that he thinks he really didn’t, noting that he “won every ward in the city” but lost after the “absentee ballots,” quotation marks his, were counted.
Election denial is a big part of what you get with this Wood guy, who back on Jan. 6, 2021, posted a message of support for the insurrectionists to his Facebook page – “There is enough people gathered in DC currently to fix the problem…just sayin’” – then a day later, he shared a video from Newsmax calling the insurrection “fake news” and added his own comment: “a complete set-up.”
This would seem to place Wood as a double denier – denying the election result, then denying that what happened on Jan. 6, 2021 was what we all saw.
Tripling down, then, Wood is now touting in campaign mailers the support of two prominent election deniers, Sixth District Congressman Ben Cline, one of 147 congressional Republicans who voted to decertify the 2020 presidential election in the hours after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack by pro-Trump fascists on the U.S. Capitol, and State Sen. Amanda Chase, who gave a speech in Washington hours before the attack, and was censured by a bipartisan majority in the State Senate after she praised the rioters who breached the Capitol as “patriots.”
“It is my honor to endorse my friend, Jim Wood, for Waynesboro City Council – Ward D,” Chase is quoted as saying in one campaign mailer for Jim Wood. “Jim and I became friends during the Second Amendment movement, where we both fought on the front lines in Virginia in defending our constitutional rights. I was impressed with Jim’s tenacity and passion for our Constitution, and I believe he will bring the same to the Waynesboro City Council as your next City Council member.”
Cline offered a quote in the mailer touting his endorsement that seems to indicate that he doesn’t really know Jim Wood.
“As a local business leader,” Cline said in his endorsement, “Jim understands how to position Waynesboro for economic success for years to come.”
Jim Wood is hardly a “local business leader.” He’s the manager of a store one city over.
Good for him that he has a paying job, but that’s about it.
He’s a guns guy, an election denier.
He promises on his campaign website that he will “drain the swamp.”
He seems to think that all he’ll need to do on City Council is go on Facebook Live once a week and spout Fox News talking points about liberals, and life here in Waynesboro will magically get better.
That ain’t the way the world works.
We don’t need this nonsense on Waynesboro City Council.
We need people who actually want Waynesboro to move forward, and roll up their sleeves and work to get the job done.
Jim Wood isn’t going to be that guy, but that’s OK.
Losing next Tuesday will give him more to whine about on his weekly Facebook Lives.
Share
Chris Graham
