Wood, a combat veteran and small business owner, has embraced his political identity as a Trump antagonist. He has publicly needled the former president on Twitter, recently declaring that “I’d rather fight for my country and the Constitution on a shoestring budget than kiss that man’s ring at Mar-a-Lago.” The 34-year-old has also collected some high-profile yet polarizing allies in Washington, including GOP Reps. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) and Liz Cheney (Wyo.). Both voted to impeach Trump and have faced calls to be excommunicated from their own party. And Wood’s race, conducted in a so-called jungle-style format where candidates from all parties compete on one ballot, could be the first real bellwether of anti-Trump Republicans’ future success... Even Wood’s campaign website frames the election as the “the first battle in this war to take back our party.” “I had a whole lot of people who told me not to get into this race, and they said that I was ruining any sort of future that I might have. But I felt like it was something that I had to do,” Wood said in an interview. “It's certainly a risk, and above all things, I'm a realist. But I thought that if somebody stood up and spoke plainly and spoke some hard truths, that they'd be able to gain traction.”