On Wednesday I attended the 61^st Annual Shad Planking in Wakefield, Virginia. I had been really looking forward to taking part in the event which started as a relatively small gathering and has grown into one of the major traditions in the Virginia political community. Even though there was a forecast of rain and the wind made the air a little chilly, the large crowd helped to illustrate why this is a great way for candidates like me to interact with great people from all across the Commonwealth of Virginia. Of course, there’s also the excitement of the friendly competition surrounding the “sign wars” which I believe my team did quite well in. We had an excavator lifting up some Bowerbank signs well into the air above the parking lot and we had thousands of signs lining the streets into the event, including signs some 20 miles out of Wakefield on 460. None of the other candidates, including Bill Bolling, had more than 100 signs.

At the actual event I was honored to be able to talk to people from all across the political spectrum about what I will do if elected Lt. Governor. A lot of people spoke to me about how the economy has impacted their family and how they want a leader who will work to increase the number of well paying jobs in the Commonwealth. As a business leader in Southwest Virginia, I started a business in my garage that has now grown to employee hundreds of people. The skills I developed during this process would allow me to help create programs that would spur job creation and people who came out to Wakefield yesterday seemed to be energetic about the possibility of electing a Lt. Governor who could play a strong role in improving our economy. In fact, I got several people who came in as Bill Bolling voters to take off their Bolling stickers and put on one of our stickers.

Also, I’d like to simply thank the Wakefield Ruritan Club who hosted the Shad Planking and all of the great people who took time out of their day to attend the event and talk with me about what they’d like their next Lt. Governor to accomplish. Finally, to see some photos of the event you can visit this link.