Healdsburg's Jim Wood Campaigns to Win 2nd Assembly Seat

To hear Jim Wood tell it, running for State Assembly was just in the cards.

“I’ve always been living by the need to be involved in the public sector,” he said when we talked a few days ago about his recently announced run for the State Assembly. “I’ve spent a lot of effort in the past six months preparing,” he continued, “but this is just the tip of the iceberg”

The two-term Healdsburg City Council member has been planning for his Assembly run since the first of the year, he told me, and his Facebook page for the race is dated March 10.

But it wasn’t until a few weeks ago when he officially released his announcement, a story that was picked up first June 18 by the Redwood Times, out of Garberville in Humboldt County – the heart of the “emerald triangle” that Wood needs to win over to take the seat.

The 2nd State Assembly District,  one of the largest in California, includes Del Norte, Humboldt, Trinity, and Mendocino counties, and the northern half of Sonoma County – Santa Rosa is split between the 2nd and the 10th, which Marc Levine won last year in a narrow victory. Due to term limits, current 2nd District Assembly member Wes Chesbro cannot seek re-election.

Wood, 53, is originally from Southern California. He and his wife Jane moved to Sonoma County in 1987; they have one son, Alex, who is 17. As Jim Wood, D.D.S., he has practiced dentistry in Cloverdale for most of that time. He is still one of only four family dentists in Cloverdale, he said, though the town has grown significantly since he started there.

While his northern Sonoma connection is solid, how he is perceived in the several hundred miles of Coastal California to the north is bound to be a challenge, he acknowledged.

“”I have traveled up and down the coast many times meeting local leaders and listening to their concerns,” he told the Redwood Times. “I understand that there are many issues facing our communities, but all of us want to move California forward and that is my focus.”

He told Patch he sees three key issues that connect in a big picture that the next Assembly member needs to deal with: Education, Economy, and Environmental Protection. “I believe they’re all intertwined,” he pointed out. “If you’re well educated, and have a good job, you’re in a position to protect the environment.”

If one of those areas break down – the troubled economy of the former logging communities of the Redwood Empire are an obvious example – then the other pieces of the puzzle are at risk, he notes.

He said he would like to look at creating a renewed interest in environmental restoration for these areas, in lieu of their traditional fishing and timber industries.

Health care – an area of particular interest to Wood – is also a key area of concern. “Access to health care in the northern counties is harder, “ he said. “It’s had to attract nurses, doctors, dentists to remote areas.”

The implementation of the Federal Affordable Care Act is scheduled to roll out for the most part in the next few years, when he hopes to find himself in the State Assembly. “I would deal with that,” he said confidently.

Wood has been an active participant in health care on a national level already.  He is a nationally recognized expert in forensic dentistry and has worked with law enforcement to help solve cases in Humboldt, Mendocino, Sonoma, Marin and Napa counties. As a member of a national emergency response team, Wood was called to the World Trade Center after 9/11 and to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to identify victims and help bring closure to their families.

Yet the area he’s running to represent, with its economic and environmental problems, finds itself entangled with an issue that relates to and impacts both: Marijuana cultivation.

If he becomes Assemblyman for the North Coast, Wood is sure to find himself more than knee-deep in the problem. “It’s really a challenging issue,” he acknowledged. “The only way you resolve these issues is through collaboration.”

Primary among parties in the issue is the federal government.  “Until the federal government makes a firm decision, there will be problems.”

Wood, along with fellow City Councilman Gary Plass, plus two members of the city’s Planning Commission and three citizens to be named next week, will be on the Marijuana Cultivation Task Force, an ad hoc body set up at the June 17 City Council meeting to hash out conditions for permitted cultivation in city limits.

But he recognizes that such ad hoc committees are only a limited fix. “Going county-by-county, city-by city isn’t going to solve the issue,” he said.

A recent New York Times article on the environmental damage being done to North Coats forests sparked his strongest statement on the matter. “The large-scale illegal grows are very profitable, and they are causing huge environmental damage, by damming streams, clear cutting forest land, and the use of pesticides, fertilizers and poisons affecting all kinds of wildlife," Wood said.

“These kinds of activities by small numbers of people are undoing some of the great gains we have made in environmental protection and restoration - it's a big deal."

At this point, Wood is one of only three candidates who have announced for the issue, all Democrats. The other candidates are the retired director of Luther Burbank Homes, John Lowry, 66; and Arcata’s  Hezekiah Allen, executive director of the Mattole Restoration Council.

“I’d be surprised if a Republican didn’t run,” he said; he reminds us that state elections are now a “top-two” process: the top two finishers in the June, 2014 primary election -- “Even if one of them gets over 50%”— will face off in the November 2014 general election.

Jim Wood doesn’t play to lose; neither will he be trying to extend his City Council position to three terms.

“I’m not going to be running for two offices,” he said. “I plan to be successful. I’m not thinking about Plan B.”