OPINION: Could Wamp's frankness on 2020 election lure Democratic votes in the Hamilton County mayoral primary?

Feb. 12—For a man who wants to be Hamilton County mayor, Weston Wamp spends a lot of time talking about national issues.

That may be the thought of at least some local voters after the entrepreneur was again in the news talking about Washington, D.C., politics.

Wamp was featured recently in an article in The New Yorker, which was titled "The Pro-Trump Case For Rejecting The Big Lie: Weston Wamp, a young conservative from Tennessee, is on a mission to convince others on the right that Joe Biden won the 2020 election."

The article pulled quotes from his video series, "Truthtellers," which is circulated on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook and sponsored by the political reform group Issue One, for which he is listed as senior political strategist and for which he said he is a "contractor."

In it, Wamp said, "I've tried to approach it with the sobriety of being a conservative Republican who lives every day with the reality that a lot of my friends and fellow-Republicans still question the results of the 2020 election. I just happen to have a real interest in the truth."

He also said he didn't care if people called him a RINO (Republican in name only) "because there's a ton of evidence that I'm conservative. I'm not going to change simply because the expectations within the Republican Party are that we all agree all the time."

Last month, the Tennessee Star took Wamp to task for being a part of Issue One, which had recently released a letter — signed by former U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, the younger Wamp's father — encouraging the congressional subcommittee investigating the breach of the U.S. Capitol by protesters on Jan. 6, 2021.

Members of the "Select Committee on the January 6 Attack are responding to this call by conducting a good-faith, bipartisan, and detailed investigation into the events of that day," the letter read. "Each of these members deserves our deepest thanks for their willingness to put country over party and prioritize our national security."

It went on to "strongly commend" the work of U.S. Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both Republicans, and added, "We sincerely hope other Republicans will join efforts to pursue the truth and facts surrounding the events of January 6."

On Feb. 4, the National Republican Committee censured Cheney and Kinzinger for their participation on the Jan. 6 committee.

Wamp, for his part, has written and posted on his campaign website seven essays he calls his "cornerstone initiatives" on education, the future and trust in his race for county mayor. And in an email to supporters last week, he talked about meeting with local mechanical and electric contractor associations, about helping volunteers put up signs for his campaign and about sharing the stage twice in the near future with fellow Republican mayoral primary contenders Matt Hullander and Sabrena Smedley.

"What a privilege it is to be in the middle of the discussion about the future of our county," he wrote.

Whether or not Wamp had any intent, though, we think his frank words on D.C. politics could have an effect on the race — among Democrats.

With only a few days to go before the qualifying deadline for the May primaries, 25-year-old Matt Adams, a U.S. Army veteran and contracted paralegal who last year declared he would run for Congress, is the only Democrat in the race for county mayor.

So, unless a major name jumps in the race in the next few days, many Democrats will be glancing at the Republican field to determine which candidate might be the most palatable to them and which one could prompt them to cross over and vote for in the primary.

That's where Wamp might get a boost.

Although we believe the race ought to focus solely on local matters, his words on what he called "the truth" of the presidential race could garner some love from left-of-center voters, who passionately hate Trump and are desperately trying to make him the face of all elections in 2022.

Hullander has made no statements on national politics, and Smedley's only comment came to this page following a request to some local Republicans about the Jan. 6, 2021, protests a year later.

"I see it as a friendly protest that unexpectedly went violent," she said. "I know various people that were there [at the initial protest], and they are good people that are not violent people at all."

Just how many Democratic voters Wamp might persuade is hard to tell.

Only a shade fewer than 29% of registered voters cast a ballot in the county mayor's race in 2018, and of those, 39.56% voted for Democratic mayoral candidate Aloyse Brown, who was fully backed by the Hamilton County Democratic Party.

But in a primary, votes wherever they come from could be crucial.

So, some Republicans loyal to Trump — he got 53.6% of county votes in the 2020 presidential election — may reject Wamp because of his candor about the election, but crossover Democrats could take up their slack.