Tuesday, 4:30 p.m.: No. 5 of 55 interviews I’ll be doing before the June primary.
Todd Wood is running against Anton Gunn for the honor of opposing either Rep. Bill Cotty or his GOP primary challenger, Sheri Few, in the fall.
Mr. Wood has run before — against Mr. Cotty in 2004.
Mr. Wood will strike you right away in the following ways: Young, clean-cut, earnest. Family man, four kids. He and his wife care a lot about their community (she’s running for the school board). A real gentleman, soft-spoken, a little nervous.
He’s involved in the Lunch Buddies program, having lunch with a disadvantaged kid in his local school. "If I’m not there, I know the kids notice." He would still do it as a House member. He believes in being civically involved. "I do it because it’s the right thing to do."
He’s concerned about growth without advance preparation — infrastructure, etc. — in his Richland Northeast/Elgin-Lugoff area. "Make sure the school is there before the houses."
He’s concerned about equity in schools. He wants kids in Kershaw County to be able to take Latin the way kids in Richland 2 do. He wants 4K extended to all children, not just those deemed "at-risk." But he’s not sure he wants the state taking over school funding as the means of providing that equality of opportunity. He doesn’t trust the state to dole it out fairly.
He struggles with the idea of school district consolidation. He says he has a Republican friend who keeps on saying, "Why don’t you come on over to the Dark Side?"
His friend advocates district consolidation, which makes Mr. Wood wonder: "I thought, what would be a reason why we should have more than one district in a county? And I can’t think of one."
He seemed sufficiently worried about it that my colleague Cindi Scoppe consoled him by saying to the best of our knowledge, there’s nothing Democratic or Republican about the eminently sensible idea or reducing the ridiculous number of school districts we have in this state.
(We’re not usually in the business of consoling candidates. But sometimes, such as when one is obsessing about something that isn’t even real, it helps to inform them of that so that we can move on.)
Which is good for him. He said that while his district seems to be becoming more Republican, he must have about 4,000 "swing voters" in the area. He likes that. "It’s heartening to know there are people like that out there.
For our endorsement in this race, click here.
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Amen on district consolidation… millions of dollars spent on overhead could be better used on teacher salaries.
Since it involves cutting government, it won’t happen.