Will Smith announced in a news release that he is running as a Republican for the Buchanan District seat. Amy White, a Republican whom supervisors unanimously appointed to the board late last year, announced in March that she would run for a full term. They will vie in the party’s firehouse primary May 1.

Smith, a Botetourt County native with a small cattle farm, works at Elbit Systems of America’s night vision plant and is a member of Valley View Baptist Church, according to the news release.

He said he believes that taxes are too high, despite what he said are promises that they would drop with ongoing development in Daleville. Where schools are concerned, he said he thinks children are at risk due to proposed gender-neutral and transgender requirements, and he will oppose “radical revisions of our history” such as The New York Times’ 1619 Project and “all forms” of critical race theory, according to the news release.

Smith believes that the Apex Clean Energy onshore wind farm project on North Mountain is wasteful and an “example of how Richmond meddles in local politics,” and that the supervisors have not pushed back hard enough against it.

“I believe in a small government that still understands its place as a servant to the citizens and not the other way around, and the best way to serve the citizens is to obey the Bible and the Virginia and US Constitutions,” he said in the news release.