St. George • Marxism, cancel culture and drag shows may fall far afield of everyday concerns most Utah cities grapple with, but they are bread and butter issues former St. George City Council candidate Ronald Jeffers Woodbury deals with online every day.
Perceived by some as a gadfly, a perpetual nuisance in St. George’s municipal ointment, Woodbury is seen by others as a champion of core conservative values, which he often pays to push in the polls he conducts on his Facebook page St. George Issues.
Woodbury ran for a seat on the City Council last year but withdrew from the race when his stepfather passed away. The stay-at-home father of two stepped down as chairman of the St. George Arts Commission for the same reason. Prior to moving to St. George in 2014, Woodbury was an executive at Altura Credit Union in Riverside, Calif.
A longtime commenter on local politics, Woodbury’s passion for polling started during his unsuccessful council run. While his bid for elective office is over for now, he is carrying on with his Facebook surveys, paying about $80 to boost or promote each one for four or five days.
Reaction to his surveys is mixed. Some garner approval; others prompt eye-rolls or raise tempers.
Take his recent liberty survey, for example. Respondents were asked if cancel culture is infiltrating St. George and placing their personal liberty at risk. They were also asked if Marxist/socialist agendas should be allowed to coexist in the community and if St. George should be declared a Second Amendment Sanctuary City.
Woodbury’s liberty survey is no longer posted on his page, but the results from the 182 respondents to the poll are prominently displayed. Yes, they said, cancel culture is a concern, no on allowing Marxist/socialist agendas, and most are all in – lock, stock and barrel — on declaring St. George a Second Amendment safe haven for gun owners.
Hesitant as they are to denounce Woodbury personally, some city officials characterize his Facebook crusade as a quixotic quest — about what they are not entirely sure.
“We don’t take on all the cultural issues that are getting national headlines,” St. George Mayor Michele Randall said. “That’s not our job. Our job is to provide for public safety, infrastructure and [deal with] land use issues. That’s what we do.”
Added Councilman Jimmie Hughes:
“I can understand why some people are upset on a national level about their personal liberties being infringed upon,” he said. “I don’t think we should let people’s civil liberties be trampled on or let the Constitution be violated. But we need to focus on what we do here as a city. I think some may be losing sight of that.”
For his part, St. George resident and gun enthusiast Kyle Phillips lauds Woodbury for trying to drain the municipal swamp.
“The issues he cares about are the issues that matter to me and my friends. We don’t need any more Brandons in St. George. It’s bad enough having one in the White House,” he said, alluding to President Joe Biden.
Woodbury, who bills himself as a Jeffersonian constitutionalist, said St. George remains a wonderful place to live, but he believes there are fissures in the city’s conservative facade.
For example, he takes issue with the city granting a permit to HBO to stage the “We’re here” drag show which brought scores of people downtown to Town Square Park last June. The premise of the program is to stage drag shows in small conservative cities and facilitate discussion between residents and members of LGBTQ+ communities.
“If you want to do a drag queen show, you need to do that in the proper venue,” Woodbury said. “You can’t call this show family friendly. You’ve got 6-year-old kids running up and putting $5 bills in the underwear of these drag queens. We have to draw the line somewhere.”
Just to be clear, Woodbury added, the scenario involving 6-year-olds happened at a national drag show he read up on, not in St. George. That said, it is unclear where he got his information. It possibly stems from a recent photo circulated by Christina Pushaw, press secretary for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, which purports to show 9-year-old or 10-year-old children stuffing money into a drag queen’s underwear at an unspecified event.
Alejandra Caraballo, an advocate for transgender rights and instructor at Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, told lgbtqnation.com that the photo was “pulled from a widely circulated Nazi meme three years ago of a Facebook post from [a] burlesque dancer who is a cis woman. This was not drag,” she added.
Misleading or not, the picture Pushaw posted led to a flurry of articles on conservative news sites. It was also shared on Twitter by Seth Dillon, CEO of the Babylon Bee, with the caption: “a small child — perhaps 5 or 6 — stuffs money into the underwear of a nearly naked drag queen as parents look on, smiling.”
The Babylon Bee is a satire site. On his Twitter site, Dillon’s profile reads: “Expert online troll. Shadow crew misfit. Unassuming middle-aged man. Trafficker in misinformation under the guise of satire.”
Woodbury is also bothered by police officers taking a knee in support of Black Lives Matter, which he noted is precisely what St. George Police Chief Kyle Whitehead did during a protest in June 2020. “There’s the question of if Black Lives Matter is a social justice group or if they are a Marxist group,” he said.
Moreover, Woodbury views the renaming of Dixie State University to Utah Tech University as prima facie evidence that cancel culture is taking root in St. George. And he worries the government could make AR-15 semi-automatic rifles illegal or infringe on people’s constitutional right to bear arms. He argues declaring St. George as a Second Amendment Sanctuary City might keep local law enforcement from enforcing unconstitutional gun laws.
Typically, he said, his surveys reach several thousand people, garner several hundred clicks, and result in between 150 to 300 filling them out. If the polls are especially controversial — like the one in which he asked respondents if they were in favor of St. George selling one or more of its golf courses to private businesses — the response can be even higher and more heated.
“I had 348 people complete that survey,” he said. “You would have thought that I recommended shutting down Zion [National Park] forever. [Some] people really wanted to come and get me.”
Another St. George Issues survey asked area residents if they trusted elections in Washington County. Just over 55 percent of those who filled out the survey said no, a result Woodbury called “earthshaking” on his Facebook page.
The question was prompted by the GOP primary race for Utah’s 72nd House district between Joe Ellison and Willie Billings. After losing by seven votes, Billings demanded a recount be done by hand. When election officials declined and instead followed state statutes by rescanning the vote counts, the results showed Billings lost by 10 votes. In response, Billings filed a lawsuit but later withdrew it due to cost concerns.
Woodbury doubts there is much election fraud in Washington County. He is also reserving judgment about the 2020 presidential race, even though he was upset about the outcome.
“I’ve got a MAGA hat and an ultra-MAGA T-shirt,” he said. “So it’s really easy to fire the memes out and say Joe Biden stole the election. But I can’t say that it was because I haven’t seen the data.”
Neither has anyone else. That’s because – legal experts and judges across the country agree – there is no data or evidence that supports former President Donald Trump’s claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential elections.
Woodbury hopes St. George leaders are taking note of the data he is sending them from his online surveys. To date, though, he hasn’t received much response. He takes exception when people call him a rabble-rouser.
“But you know, sometimes you need to kick a hornet’s nest because it seems like no one is listening,” he said.
Not all of Woodbury’s polls are controversial. Vince Brown, director of the Utah Tech University’s Institute of Politics, said some of them deal with growth, water, and other issues that mirror what he hears people talking about in the community.
While he said the surveys can be flawed and often resemble push polls aimed at pushing issues rather than finding out what people think, he lauds Woodbury and other residents who get involved in the civic arena. He attributes local concerns about cancel culture, losing personal liberties and other hot-button issues to the populism sweeping the nation.
“I wouldn’t necessarily say it reflects the majority opinion, but it’s a sizable and very vocal minority,” Brown said. “It’s easy to try to dismiss people as not offering policy solutions and just expressing anger and vague claims about liberty. However, I see it a bit differently … We have to engage people and have a discussion about what is concerning them.”
For Woodbury, civic engagement is important.
“If I write 10 surveys and just one of them [sees] the light of day and a policymaker reconsiders what [he or she] is doing, I kind of see that as a win,” he said.
