About
Go With Joe!
Joe has been living in Wood County for the last 22 years. He and his wife moved here to be closer to her parents, who were then in their 80s. Carolyn had been raised in Rossford with the name Carol King. Sadly, Joe lost her to cancer in 2021, after 37 years of marriage. They have two sons. One lives in Bowling Green with Joe.
He is retired now, but he has had a wide variety of work experience that both prepared him to be County Commissioner and lets him relate to a wide cross section of Wood County residents. His last ten years of work was in an industrial ceramics plant. He knows what it's like to come home every day, exhausted and filthy. He has also worked in education both as a teacher and as a special needs aide, providing sign language interpreting. He worked for many years as a grant writer, creating and implementing multi-year, multi-million dollar budgets that helped people in a variety of ways. When he was much younger, he also worked in retail, food service, and as an independent computer consultant. He understands the technical challenges facing us in the 21st century.
Joe has some core beliefs that he will bring to the County Commissioner's role:
Grassroots Democracy, Joe firmly believes in following the will of the people, because the People are almost always right. A majority of the people understand that data centers threaten our way of life and oppose them. A majority understand that global warming is real and that we have to fight it. A majority want us to have the same kind of single payer universal health care all the other developed countries have. But somehow it has become normal for legislatores to ignore the will of the people. Joe won't do that;
Ecological Wisdom, Joe won't approve projects or businesses that threaten our air, water, and health. Bringing jobs to Wood County is important, but it's also important what kind of jobs those are, and what they are doing. Increasingly, we see governments chasing after ANY business, no matter how polluting. This is wrong;
Social Justice, as wages continue to fall, and people fall deeper into debt, our state and federal governments under Republican control have slashed aid to Ohioans. This causes huge problems at the County level. Although the County can't totally replace the cuts from the state and federal governments, it can do more. When Joe is elected, it will.
Non-Violence, Our country is being torn apart by the two party system. Our political system is supposed to prevent political violence by giving the People a voice in their own government. Violence is never the answer. But, as people grow increasingly frustrated with an unresponsive two party "System," they are growing increasingly violent. The government is also growing increasingly violent, as ICE officers daily violate people's rights. As an Independent, Joe will be uniquely situated to represent the People of Wood County, not the Party that put him into office. It's clear we need a change in our government to head off worse political violence than our country has already seen. Joe has had a lifelong committment to Non-Violence, and he will bring those values with him into office.