Caffeinated Politics

If Hollywood casting is looking for an authentic rustic, uncombed, often poorly shaven, overweight, highly talkative person for a film, Sam Wood from Wild Rose would fit the bill.  I am not being snarky, but honest. When I first read online about the man seeking to win the office of Waushara County Sheriff in the August primary, my first thought was that he had to be a drop-in from the movie world. Give him a Southern accent, and we have seen this type in countless movies.  Readers will have encountered this type of character in books galore.  When he nearly won the election, a race where he had zero experience for the job he was seeking, I realized that he fit more of the makeup of the county than I wished to think possible.

An online friend chatted with me over the summer about the race and observed that any Friday night at fast-food eateries in Wautoma (the county seat), the “best of the old-t-shirts” and dirty jeans crowd dominated. Wood, he wrote, was far more like the county’s rank-and-file than I wanted to consider possible. He had responded to my lines about what would happen if Wood got serious about the election. What if he wore a cotton button-down shirt, could verbally condense his message into effective sound bites, and looked like he got up in the morning and greeted it with a look in the mirror? Again, not being snarky but looking at the race from a sharp political perspective. (I was the campaign manager for a county sheriff candidate years ago.) I had the luxury of viewing this truly engaging race in Waushara County, where I grew up, without a vested interest.

Wood had ample material to work with as he waged his campaign, given the sorry lot of characters who worked in the sheriff’s department. Thanks to The Badger Project, a news operation staffed with ace reporters who marshal their investigative skills, they unearthed dirt aplenty in Wautoma. (This project is part of my email inbox for information, and I urge you to do the same.)  Wood was shocked (as we all were) about the sticky fingers of the then sheriff, penis pics being offered by a deputy and requests of the same, fraternization running amok, and officers making $75,000 but having no arrests or tickets.   Wood certainly had evidence of the badge being dishonored.

Never having met Wood, he comes across as the type of man who would have pulled my car from a snowbank on a country road back in the years when I traversed them weekly.  There were many such people around me as a kid. Watching him on social media, I could see how that sense of everyday generosity could be used as a political credential, as though being a solid guy automatically translates into being a competent sheriff. But authenticity, while admirable and a clear political commodity, is not a substitute for training, experience, or the ability to run a law‑enforcement agency. For me, that was the bottom line.

He had no experience as a deputy, a jailer, or a reserve officer. Running a sheriff’s department is not a ceremonial role.  It must be seen as a profession that requires knowledge of a wide array of disciplines, none of which can be learned on the fly.

I never understood Wood’s resume.  I read he served in the Marine Corps in his younger years, but that does not dovetail into an ability to be sheriff. In fact, it can be a direct conflict. Military-oriented training and the needed de‑escalation skills as a county law enforcement officer are two separate things. The Marine Corps trains people to neutralize threats, whereas sheriff’s deputies spend most of their time calming them. These are fundamentally different skill sets, and research (especially considering police shootings of POC) makes clear that one does not automatically prepare someone for the other.

The one place where I found Wood glaringly and completely wrong is in how he glamorized military‑style weapons.  The very type of firearms that law‑enforcement officers dread encountering on domestic‑disturbance calls. This isn’t theoretical. A 2023 report from the National Institute of Justice found that officers are increasingly encountering AR‑style rifles during routine calls, and that these weapons dramatically increase fatality risk in close‑quarters situations. I have been a longtime and vocal supporter of the ‘Madison Police Department.  I have heard from officers who have spoken candidly about the deadly modern gun landscape as “a numbers problem” noting that the sheer volume of high‑powered rifles in private homes has changed the risk calculus of everyday policing. When a candidate for sheriff publicly celebrates the weapons, just by showing them off in pictures or placing them on his wall (!), it concerned me greatly about how seriously he really took the office he was hoping to win.

None of this is an indictment of Wood’s character. By all accounts, he is likable, earnest, and genuinely committed to his community. In the main, he proved to be a most interesting candidate who seemed to, as might be said from years ago back home, ‘sail by the seat of his pants’. His campaign looked unplanned and off-the-cuff. Perhaps it was.

Or Sam Wood is the most authentic actor this side of Hollywood.