Republican incumbent Debbie Wood and Libertarian Charles Temm Jr. are the two candidates running for the position of State Representative District 38 in the 2022 general election on Nov. 8.
District 38 is made up of parts of Chambers County and Lee County including Valley, Lanett, Huguley, Beulah, Lake Harding, Bleeker, Salem, Beauregard, parts of Opelika and areas outside the city limit of Smith Station.
Republican Debbie Wood (I)
Wood, 56, was born in Chambers County and has lived within District 38 almost her entire life. She and her husband Bobby have been married 32 years and live in Valley. They have two children and three granddaughters.
Wood graduated from Beulah High School then from Southern Union State Community College. Since then, she’s been a real estate agent for 30 years and has owned her own company, Century 21 Wood Real Estate, in Valley for 22 years.
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She decided to go back to school to earn her BA in business from Faulkner University where she graduated in 2021.
Wood has served four terms as county commissioner for Chambers County, became the first female to serve as Commission Chair, was the president of the Association of County Commissions of Alabama and was a representative to the National Association of County Officials Board in Washington D.C.
Currently, Wood is involved in the Valley Kiwanis, Smith Station Republican Club, Bleeker Ruritan Club, Chambers County Republican Club, Lee County Board of Realtors and the Chambers County Women’s Civic Club.
In 2018, Wood was elected to the Alabama House to represent District 38. She said she ran for the position for her granddaughters.
“That was one of the biggest reasons that I ran. I want them to have a great place to live in Alabama,” Wood said. “And I want us to create jobs and create the environment that keeps them at home.”
Wood said she’s accomplished a lot, but she’s running for reelection because there’s more on the table that she needs to finish.
Throughout her four years in office, Wood said one of the most important bills she’s worked on was a bill that requires health care facilities to allow a caregiver or relative to visit a patient or resident as they near death.
“My mother passed away in January of 2021, and as hard as it was, it was harder not being with her,” Wood said. “Hospitals closed their doors because they were trying to protect their employees. They had to take desperate measures.”
This bill says that even in the midst of a pandemic, a loved one should never be alone at death. Wood said Senator Garlan Gudger are working on clarifying and defining when the end of life is.
Wood also worked on a military friendly bill that allows military families with orders to move to Alabama to enroll their children in school without an address.
“I’m really excited about that bill. I think that it will help families. I think the visitation rights will help families. Those two, I’m super excited about,” she said.
Wood has also been involved with the following committees: Ways and Means Education, Urban and Rural Development, House County and Municipal Government and Lee County Legislation Committee.
If reelected, Wood said she’d like to focus on broadband access in the rural areas of the district and on Exton’s Law, which is a bill that would require physicians to allow children and adults that have special needs to go on the transplant list.
When asked why people should vote for her, Wood said, “First of all, they know me. That’s hard in today’s world to have someone that represents you that has been in your home, been at your table, been at our church, been in your community as long as I have. Number two, I work for them, and I understand that.”
Libertarian Charles Temm Jr.
Temm, 61, is originally from Maine but moved to Salem, Ala. in 1999 after retiring from the Army as a Sgt. First Class.
Temm and his wife Ottilia Mora have been married for 17 years, and he has one son, Charles Temm III, who is about to retire from the Army.
For about 20 years, Temm has worked at the Walmart Distribution Center in Opelika. After moving to Alabama, he earned a degree in world history and masters in secondary history education from Auburn University at Montgomery.
Temm said he planned to teach high school students but realized it wasn’t actually what he wanted to do, so he continued working at the Walmart Distribution Center.
He is also a member of The American Legion, a member of The Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War and a volunteer at Rescue K911, an animal shelter in Camp Hill, Ala.
Throughout Temm’s 22 years of military service, he was stationed in varies states across the country.
“I looked at about a dozen states that I lived in, and Alabama is the one that got my attention,” he said. “I liked the people here, they’re friendly. Nobody gets up in your business all the time. Reasonably, the government was pretty laid back and didn’t get too much in people’s business, but now it’s getting more and more like other states that I rejected when it was time to retire.”
Temm said that’s one of the reasons why he decided to run for State Representative of District 38.
“I’d like to see if I could do something to slow that down,” he said.
As a Libertarian, Temm said he is a fan of limited government and believes government is a necessary evil.
“I don’t like big government, and that was one of the things that attracted me to Alabama,” he said.
Temm said he also decided to run for this position after seeing local government entities pass things even if the majority of the citizens were against it.
If elected, Temm said he’d work to legalize marijuana and get marijuana convictions expunged from records. He’d also like to see Alabama become a constitutional carry state.
When asked why people should vote for him, Temm said, “I’m not a professional politician. I’m not getting paid to run for election like my opponent.”
“I’m not a fan of using the government to sit there and try to manage people’s lives like Debbie Wood,” he continued. “She wanted to make sure that everybody was masked up and they had all their shots and she was for COVID lockdowns.”
These are things Temm said he doesn’t believe the government has the right to do.
“Republicans are supposed to be for minimal government,” he said. “We all know it ain’t true anymore, but it’s what they claim to be and she’s not.”
