Candidates working with Christian Nationalist preacher Andrew Wommack want to control the city of Woodland Park

The last time I wrote about Christian Nationalist preacher Andrew Wommack, it was because members of his church had taken over a local public school board—winning the majority of seats in a recent election—and the community was finally feeling the devastating consequences.

The whole situation may get worse next week because people associated with Wommack are now attempting to control the city council.

Let me back up a bit: In 2021, Wommack told the members of his political group Truth & Liberty Coalition that, with all the conservatives in their part of Colorado, “we ought to take over Woodland Park.”

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“We have enough people here in this school we could elect anybody we want,” he said. “We could take over this place.”

Wommack had moved to Woodland Park to launch Charis Bible College, and now he wanted his people to take over the local government. That began with the school board.

It’s the kind of rhetoric that conservative Christians have been using for decades to urge their followers to run for local office as a way to influence policy. Wommack himself insisted in 2022 that he got “78 or 80” of his preferred candidates elected in local races (out of an estimated 178 his ministry was backing).

That may have been an exaggeration, but they really did take over the Woodland Park School District.

For example, the reconfigured board, now controlled by Christian Nationalists, adopted a conservative social studies curriculum called “American Birthright” that focuses on American exceptionalism and whitewashes our nation’s ugly history. It says the federal government shouldn’t have any authority over public schools, that teachers should avoid teaching about current events and media literacy, and that telling kids to vote amounts to activism. (NBC News’ Tyler Kingkade noted: “[American Birthright] includes Bill Clinton’s impeachment but not Donald Trump’s.&rdquo

The program was already deemed unfit for students and rejected as extreme by the state’s school board. They said adopting this program would have “damaging and lasting effects on the civic knowledge of students and their capacity to engage in civic reasoning and deliberation.” The Wommack-approved school board embraced it anyway.

And then school board president David Rusterholtz added Christian prayers to board meetings.

And then he “used his official board email address to proselytize, inviting fellow board members to join his church and receive Jesus as their savior.”

And then the board approved a charter school without properly informing the public in advance.

And then they imposed a gag order and fired teachers who criticized the moves publicly.

And then the newly hired superintendent decided not to apply for grants worth up to $1.2 million that previously covered the salaries of 15 counselors and social workers because he wanted to focus on academics, not emotions (even though the latter has a direct impact on the former).

And then began an exodus of many staffers and administrators who no longer wanted to work in the district, including “nearly 40% of the high school’s professional staff.”

When there was a school board election in November, with a chance for three progressives to oust the Christian majority, they couldn’t pull it off. Two of the conservative Christians retained their seats while only one progressive won. Conservatives still have control of the school board.

That means many of the people who are tasked with improving the district are the same ones who actually want to destroy it. It’s the direct result of voter apathy. When people don’t vote, a small-but-organized group of people have an easier path to win races. And Wommack’s ministry is nothing if not extremely organized.

That’s why they’re now attempting to take over the Woodland Park City Council.

In a disturbing piece, Logan M. Davis of the Colorado Times Recorder writes about how Wommack’s followers are eager to complete their takeover of the city.

Here’s the situation right now: There are seven members of the city council, including the mayor. On April 2, five of those seats will be on the ballot, and all voters can select up to four candidates for the council, meaning a small-but-organized quartet could win the majority in a single swoop.

Wouldn’t you know it: Four of the candidates are connected to Wommack.

What’s especially interesting, though, is how they’re trying hard to hide that connection in order to win those four seats without drawing any unwanted attention before the election.

When Wommack’s slate won the school board in 2021, they did so with only one of Andrew Wommack’s actual acolytes on the ballot – Sue Patterson, who still serves on the WPSD board – and three other candidates who were ideologically compatible with the ministry, but not personally tied to it prior to their runs for office. The de facto council slate is different: three of the four Wommack-aligned candidates running for office in Woodland Park this year have been students or employees at Andrew Wommack’s organizations, and the fourth has close ties to members of those organizations. If all four win seats on council, they will hold a majority, and, in the eyes of concerned locals, Andrew Wommack will have made good on his threat.

He will have taken over Woodland Park.

Davis does an excellent job of connecting the dots between the four candidates and their ties to Wommack.

Don Dezellem is one of them. He ran for the same seat two years ago and lost, and he was adamant at the time that he had no connection to Wommack. But that’s not true.

Dezellem does have close ties, however, to Charis graduate and current councilman Robert Zuluaga, with whom he has promoted a series of “Patriot Academy” classes. Patriot Academy is a far-right training organization, founded by a man named Rick Green, which promises to “train citizens to understand and influence government policy with a Biblical worldview.” In both 2022 and 2023, per social media posts, Dezellem and Zuluaga promoted a series of “Biblical Citizenship” classes based on Green’s teachings and Patriot Academy’s programming.

Eric Lockman is another candidate with a more direct line to Wommack: He and his wife attended Charis Bible College. His bio on the city’s website says he “serves as the Director of Operations at his local church”… but doesn’t mention the name of the church, which is affiliated with Wommack.

Another candidate, Tim Northrup, literally works for Wommack’s ministry, in the call center. He’s been doing that for the past five years, but none of that appears in his bio, where his work experience magically comes to an end after moving to Woodland Park several years ago. He also studied at Charis Bible College.

Frank Connors is the sole incumbent running for re-election. His wife was a student at Charis, and Connors himself promotes the school and Wommack’s ministry online.

None of those candidates, Davis says, responded to his requests for comment. They certainly didn’t deny any of these connections.

Even though Wommack’s church can’t technically endorse those candidates without jeopardizing their non-profit status, it wouldn’t take much of an effort for church members to spread the word that this slate of candidates needs everyone’s support.

And what would happen if they took over?

“The implications, if the new city council majority is [made up of] Wommack supporters, could prove detrimental to other locals,” [Bridget] Curran, a 4th-generation resident of the area, said. Like many others, Curran worries that a Wommack-aligned council majority would continue granting the ministry property tax exemptions for their planned expansions, placing increasing strain on local services. “There are water, road, and emergency service issues already. We can’t rely on sales tax alone to bear the burden of ensuring those services are maintained and sufficient for our area.”

That could be just the beginning. Kristiana de Leon, a city council member in Black Diamond, Washington and a candidate for the state legislature, told me there was plenty of reason to worry a right-wing takeover of local government. They could change policies that affect people who have disabilities or are in need of mental health care. A city council gets to decide how resources are prioritized, and we’ve repeatedly seen who “wins” and “loses” when conservatives are in control of the purse.

The question is whether enough people in the community will care enough to vote in a municipal election —and if enough of them will vote to outnumber the people connected to Wommack’s ministry. Wommack’s people aren’t a majority of the local population, but his power is making low-stake elections seem like existential crises.

Everyone loses when Christian extremists hell-bent on turning cities into extensions of their churches get this kind of power.