Former Trump Administration Official Casey Wardynski Announces Campaign for Congress

Casey Wardynski in a file photograph. Courtesy of Friends of Casey

Casey Wardynski, who served as assistant secretary of the Army under former President Donald Trump, has announced that he’s running for the Republican nomination for Alabama’s 5th Congressional District in the 2022 election.

“I’m running for Congress to continue the work that President Trump started,” Wardynski told The Epoch Times in an email.

“We need leaders in D.C. that put America First, not weak Republicans that will cave to pressure from the radical left. Americans are tired of seeing weak Republicans abandon their campaign promises and not support a strong America First agenda.”

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), who currently represents the district, says he’s decided to seek the U.S. Senate seat that’s coming open because of the retirement of Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.). Brooks has been endorsed by Trump.

At least two other Republicans have declared their candidacies for the seat being vacated by Brooks.

Andy Blalock, a middle-school science teacher who describes himself as conservative on fiscal policy and a moderate on social issues, and Dale Strong, a businessman who says he was an early supporter of Trump and would work on enacting many Trump-endorsed policies, are running.

Wardynski told The Epoch Times that he’s an outsider like Trump, as opposed to a career politician.

“I have a proven record as a tough, results-oriented leader. For example, President Trump asked the Army to build the wall. As the Assistant Secretary of the Army, my office revamped policy to quickly put the right people on the ground at the border. When I found out that West Point was teaching cadets critical race theory as a belief system, I shut it down,” he said.

“As Superintendent of a large urban school system, I turned a $19 million deficit into a surplus—without raising taxes and while raising graduation rates by a third! Many candidates talk a great talk, but few fight to get the job done right.”

Wardynski said the United States must finish the southern border wall, bring back Trump’s foreign policy posture, and “stop caving to Iran and China.”

He also called to “cancel the ‘cancel culture’ and end the teaching of critical race theory in our schools and government agencies.”

At least one other former Trump administration official is also running for Congress. Catalina Lauf is challenging Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), a fierce Trump critic, in Illinois’s 16th Congressional District.

“This is a very Trump Republican district. So now he’s in a fight, because we’re coming in, we have the resources and then we have the groundswell of support to be challenging him,” she told The Epoch Times in March.