Congressional candidate Casey Wardynski brought his campaign to Huntsville on Monday, where he addressed the Tennessee Valley Republican Club. Wardynski is running for the Republican nomination in Alabama’s 5th Congressional District.
Wardynki is a former U.S. Army colonel, former Huntsville superintendent of education and defense contractor CEO. He was most recently assistant secretary of the Army for the Trump administration. He is running for the seat currently held by Congressman Mo Brooks, R-Alabama, who is running for the open U.S. Senate seat.
“While I was there I saw things that I could not believe,” Wardynski said of his time in Washington.
“Things are askew in Washington,” Wardynski said. “They have given too much authority to the bureaucrats.”
Wardynski used Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House coronavirus adviser and head of the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, as an example: “When he tells Rand Paul that he does not have to share information with them (the Senate).”
Wardynski said that he has read the recently released Fauci emails.
“There is too much we are not supposed to know now,” Wardynski said. “Folks in Washington believe we are not smart enough to help run this country.”
Wardynski said that there is a professional class in Washington that has accumulated too much power.
“They have always been in Washington; either in an administrative agency or working for a congressional office or in a think tank or in lobbying,” Wardynski said.
“Why would you nominate someone who did not vote for you?” Wardynski said of the nominating process. “(Former Secretary of Defense) Mattis is not a Trump guy; he is a Washington guy. (Former Secretary of Defense) Esper was not a Trump guy.”
“The permanent government is making policy,” Wardynski said. “They are clawing power away the appointed people. The appointed person has to claw it back for months after confirmation.”
“The Department of Defense is even worse because we have been at war for the last twenty years,” Wardynski said. “No one has said no to the Department of Defense in years. It was nothing to sit next to a man in uniform and have him reinterpret what a policymaker just said so that it means the absolute opposite.”
“We have got big economic problems,” Wardynski said of the economy citing inflation and the growing national debt.
“They are always needing your money and our liberties,” Wardynski said of liberals. “Joe Biden said there are no absolute liberties in the bill of rights. I spent thirty years in the military protecting those absolute rights.”
Wardynski said that Republicans in Congress need to stand up to the Democrats and the Biden administration.
“We don’t need Mitt Romney who is already signaling that he will work with them on an infrastructure bill,” Wardynski said.
Wardynski said that Biden’s infrastructure bill “will transfer local zoning rights to the federal government.”
Wardynski said that the big push on fighting racism is “coming from the White House.”
Wardynski was in charge of manpower for the Army for the Trump administration.
“There were like 36 guys out of 1.3 million,” Wardynski said. “We knew who they were. There were only about 40, 30 something like that.”
“This is not a country of racists,” Wardynski said.
“The folks in Washington want to change this country from a country of equal opportunity to a country of equity of outcome,” Wardynski said. “That is very close to Marxists. It will put us at each other’s throats.”
Wardynski said that he is not afraid to fight liberals.
“I fought them over transgenders” as Huntsville schools superintendent, Wardynski said. “I fought with a judge over a fifty year desegregation order that was holding us back.”
Wardynski expressed concerns about the children following the COVID-19 forced economic shutdown and the extended periods of e-learning.
“Last year the schools were closed down and the second and third graders are going to have a hell of a time catching up,” former Supt. Wardynski said.
Wardynski predicted that Republicans would take over Congress in 2022.
Wardynski took numerous questions from the audience.
Wardynski was in the Pentagon on Jan. 6 when the Capitol was stormed.
“The National Guard in DC answers to the president,” Wardynski said.
“Washington has a very small National Guard,” Wardynski said. “They have mutual aid agreements with Maryland and Virginia.”
Wardynski blamed the mayor of Washington D.C. for many of the problems that the city experienced.
During the June 2020 riots, “Things were going badly at the White House because the Mayor and her police force were not doing their jobs.”
“Finally in June we moved two combat divisions in case they were needed in D.C.,” Wardynski said. “Officers began talking about not obeying the President. That’s when I started talking to lawyers about how we respond.”
Wardynski said that the Pentagon offered to provide National Guard troops for the inauguration.
“The mayor did not want them, they did not want a military presence,” Wardynski said.
When the mob entered the Capitol Building, “There was no request from law enforcement,” Wardynski said.
“I just got a call from the Virginia and Maryland Guard,” Wardynski said. “They were coming. Under what rules of engagement?”
Wardynski said that someone went around the chain of command.
“The DC police was very unhelpful,” Wardynski. “The capitol police asked to use machine guns.”
“I lay that on the Mayor of Washington DC and her inability to lead,” Wardynski said of the Jan. 6 riot.
Since the Jan. 6 incidence, “It has been seized on to seize more of our rights,” Wardynski said.
“We were $19 million in debt,” Wardynski said of the Huntsville City Schools when he took over. When people suggested that the system raise taxes, Supt. Wardynski said that he replied. “No what we need is less spending.”
“If we keep taxes low, business will come,” Wardynski said. “We have got to keep a low tax environment.”
“I would like to see the state push back,” Wardynski said of the state response to the Biden Administration. “I would like to see a sanctuary for the Second Amendment.”
“Any right that we give up we are never getting back, that is a one way street,” Wardynski added.
Wardynski expressed his support for vouchers.
“Education dollars should follow the kids,” Wardynski stated. “That is how we become a strong education state.”
He was asked about people coming to Huntsville for jobs; but bringing their out of state values to Huntsville.
“You destroyed California, don’t come to Alabama to change Alabama,” Wardynski said that the community needs to tell those people.
“Part of what makes this a great place is religious belief,” Wardynski stated. “Biden is coming for our Churches.”
Wardynski warned that they will use “Transgenders and gays” to attack the Churches.
“They will take the property tax exemption and begin destroying religious belief,” Wardynski explained.
“Alabamians have a common belief in s6omething bigger than ourself,” Wardynski said.
Wardynski explained that the liberal elites and academic are using Critical Race Theory to try to tear down our country.
“You don’t wipe out yesterday to make tomorrow better,” Wardynski explained. “When they wipe out our past they will fill it with something else and that will be something worse than anything that we can ever imagine.”
“Today is President Trump’s birthday I wish him a happy birthday, he is 75,” Wardynski said.
“I have never been a big gun owner; but last summer I tripled my gun ownership during the riots because it looked like that if I needed them the police would not come,” Colonel Wardynski said.
Wardynski was asked why he resigned his position as Superintendent of the Huntsville City Schools.
Wardynski explained that his first wife Karen and current wife Sue were friends. Karen got cancer and it eventually killed her. Following Karen’s death, he fell in love with Sue.
“I had asked her to marry me,” Wardynski said. It would be a conflict to marry Sue and be her supervisor at the school system. The board asked him to stay while their attorneys tried to make this work. “They worked for a month and could not figure it out” so Wardynski resigned.
Wardynski said that he supports voter ID laws.
“I think Alabama is on the right track,” Wardynski said of voter picture ID requirements. “You can’t go anywhere without identification. To present photo ID to vote, that is not a lot to ask.”
The candidate was asked about the November 2020 election.
“I was watching that night and I felt something was odd,” Wardynski said. “I went to bed and when I woke up I said what the hell.” “When I was defending the country I believed that the people giving me orders were chosen by the people and now I have doubts.”
Wardynski said that he supports border security.
“70 percent of the people say that they want border security,” Wardynski said. “You have to have borders to be a country.”
Wardynski added that the chaos currently occurring at the border is both a national security and a public health risk.
“You have to go through all kinds of rig ma to even get on an airplane; but people are coming across the border with no health checks at all,” Wardynski stated.
Madison County Commission Chairman Dale Strong is also running for the Republican nomination in the Fifth Congressional District.
Chris Horn is the Chairman of the Tennessee Valley Republican Club.
The Tennessee Valley Republican Club meets on the second Monday of every month from 11:30 to 1:00 pm. at Straight to Ale at 2610 Clinton Avenue NW, in Huntsville.
