The race for the District 24 state Senate seat is taking a lap through the courts as Guilford County Democrat J.D. Wooten sues Alamance County Republican Amy Galey over what he calls false accusations in campaign ads.
Fraud allegations that Wooten used a Veterans Administration-secured loan to buy an investment property made in Galey campaign materials this summer were false and distorted, according to the suit Wooten filed Sept. 14 in Guilford County, and include “demonstrably false, misleading, scurrilous, and defamatory statements” about his loan application when buying a house in 2019.
Wooten used a VA-secured loan from First Bank to buy a second house on Lindell Road in Greensboro. The loan program is intended for buying primary residences, not investment properties, but there is no minimum time limit a veteran has to live in a house after buying it, according to Wooten’s suit.
According to Wooten, a former officer in the U.S. Air Force, he did live in the Lindell Road House for seven months.
A deed of trust from the actual lender, First Bank, includes a requirement to live in the house for at least a year unless the lender agrees to release the borrower, or “unless extenuating circumstances exist which are beyond the borrower’s control.”
In this case, Wooten moved from Greensboro to a rental home in District 24, after litigation over district boundaries and gerrymandering settled where those lines would be, according to the suit, which his lawyer advised him fell within that exemption. District 24 includes Alamance County and part of eastern Guilford County.
Wooten now owns two houses in central Greensboro less than two miles apart, according to Guilford County GIS — the Lindell Road house and another on Wilson Street. He also used VA-secured loan to buy the Wilson Street house, according to a 2017 deed of trust the Galey campaign shared with media outlets, but lived in McLeansville for most of 2018, according to the suit, and rented out the Wilson Street house that July to help pay for it.
Emails from the Galey campaign say Wooten showed he never intended to live in the Lindell Road house by keeping his voter registration in McLeansville and continuing to raise money for his campaign while claiming to live outside the district in Greensboro. Wooten counters in his suit that he had not closed his campaign office after his unsuccessful 2018 challenge to Sen. Rick Gunn, and maintained contact with his supporters while focusing on his legal career, and bought the Lindell Road house to cut down his nine-mile commute from McLeansville. He later corrected his address in amended campaign finance reports.
Wooten charges TV ads and fliers from Galey’s campaign and supporting organizations accusing him of loan fraud deliberately blurred the distinction between the certification he gave the VA and the deed of trust he gave his bank, and distorted a quote he made to a reporter at WXII to make it appear he admitted he did not live up to the commitment he made to the VA. He is asking for damages of at least $25,000 for harm done to his reputation as a veteran and lawyer.
Galey has not backed off.
“J.D. Wooten has a problem telling the truth. When called out, he files a frivolous lawsuit to distract the public,” Galey wrote in an email to the Times-News. “Ample evidence proves that J.D. Wooten did not intend to make the house, which he purchased with VA assistance, his primary residence.”