Missouri U.S. Senate independent candidate John Wood has more residential ties to Virginia than the Show-Me State, as The Heartlander has reported. And the same is apparently true of his financial ties.
According to his own candidate financial disclosures, Wood’s primary banking is out of Virginia and Washington, D.C., and that’s where his children’s 529 accounts – state-sponsored savings plans for higher education – are located as well. In fact, the disclosure do not indicate any bank accounts in Missouri
Wood advertises himself as a sixth-generation Missourian, and readily assures folks that he lives in the state, albeit only as of mid-June.
But after a series of jobs and multiple million-dollar homes in the Washington, D.C. area, and with a son enrolled in a tony Virginia prep school, Wood hasn’t much more to show for living in Missouri than a fresh voter registration card and a modest apartment near Kansas City’s upscale Country Club Plaza.
The latest in his series of D.C.-based jobs was as senior investigative counsel for the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol. Records obtained by The Heartlander indicate his salary there was approximately $150,000 a year.
Wood also reported earning $1.9 million from his time as senior vice president, chief legal officer and general counsel for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Missouri’s median income this year for a single earner is $53,547.
Kansas City writer Jack Cashill wrote in The American Spectator, about his recent encounter with Wood at a Westport eatery, that he “had encountered a RINO in the wild, an agent sent to Missouri to subvert an election for reasons he could not begin to explain, let alone justify.”
“Trump-hating liberals’ handpicked Senate candidate John Wood is a creature of Washington, D.C., not a Missourian,” Gregg Keller of the Schmitt for Senate PAC told The Heartlander. “In that sense, it isn’t surprising he doesn’t take part in Missouri life in any meaningful fashion.”
Wood, a Republican in the past, is running as an independent “moderate” alternative to Republican primary candidates, though the primary is over, with sitting Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt handily capturing the GOP nomination in the Aug. 2 election. Yet, Wood had been recruited to work for the heavily partisan and widely panned Jan. 6 committee by none other than Rep. Liz Cheney – whom Wyoming voters just voted out of office.
Moreover, Wood said in his conversation with Cashill that the FBI had “acted in good faith” while perpetrating the now-debunked theory that Donald Trump had somehow colluded with Russians.
Cashill also questioned Wood’s seriousness as a candidate.
“Wood did not shake a single hand at our restaurant or pass out a single flier,” Cashill wrote. “This whole thing is a con, a grift, an embarrassment.”
