People are asking. Here is the answer—not a press release, not a campaign pitch, but the plain truth about who I am, where I come from, and why I built this.
My name is Tom Baker IV. I was born and raised in Wake Forest, North Carolina. My family has lived in this part of the state since the early 1700s. I am a twelfth-generation American. Wake Forest is not a place I moved to for a job or chose from a list. It is the ground my family has walked for three centuries. When I write about this town, I am writing about home.
I tell you that not to claim some special authority, but so you understand what is at stake for me. I have no exit strategy. I am not passing through. The decisions made by our town and county boards, our school system, they land on my family the same way they land on yours.
I graduated from Wakefield High School in 2003 and enlisted in the United States Navy. I served ten years on active duty. I started as an Aviation Electronics Technician deploying with the USS Nimitz carrier strike group. I then transitioned to Aviation Warfare Systems Operator, serving as an unmanned aircraft mission coordinator in Iraq under Naval Special Warfare Unit 3, supporting 5th Special Forces Group AOBs and ODAs, and as aircrew on the EP-3E signals intelligence aircraft with Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadrons VQ-2 and VQ-1. I flew collection missions over East Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and Southwest Asia. I helped lead the decommissioning of VQ-2 before moving to VQ-1. I completed eleven deployments across carrier-based, ground, and land-based missions.
In 2009 and 2010, I deployed to Diyala Province, Iraq, where my work directly supported security operations for the Iraqi parliamentary elections, the final national election before the U.S. withdrawal. It was dangerous, complicated, consequential work: protecting a democratic process in a place where people were willing to kill and die over the outcome of a vote.
After active duty, I worked as a private military contractor supporting special operations forces, two deployments to Afghanistan embedded with ODAs from 1st Special Forces Group and with Charlie Platoon of SEAL Team 3, and one to Iraq, including UAV operations out of Al Asad Air Base in 2016 supporting the counter-ISIS fight. In 2014, I was in Afghanistan supporting security operations for the presidential elections there.
I have spent over fifteen years working to protect elections and democratic institutions—on three continents, at every level of government, in conditions ranging from combat zones to county board meetings.
Coming Home
I left the military sector and came home. I used the Post-9/11 GI Bill to finish my B.S. in Political Science from Arizona State University. In 2016, I went to work on a congressional campaign in California as Research Director for a DCCC Red to Blue race. In 2018, I worked on election research at the North Carolina Democratic Party. I have worked every election cycle since—advising and supporting nonprofits, state and local governments, and federal partners on election safety, security monitoring, and threat assessment.
During the 2020 election cycle, I served as a consultant on a team of intelligence professionals monitoring political violence and providing threat analysis to civil society groups as part of a national coalition to protect elections against malign actors. That experience led me to Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative, where I served over four years as the North Carolina State Lead and Senior Research Specialist, working with stakeholders across the state’s political violence early warning and election safety infrastructure.
I am a graduate of the Student Veterans of America Leadership Institute and a recipient of a legislative fellowship from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Student Veterans of America.
Why Wake Forest Matters Exists
Local journalism is disappearing. You already know this. The papers that once covered town hall, that once asked hard questions of the people spending your tax dollars, that once printed the names and the numbers, they are gone, or they are ghosts of what they were. What fills the void is press releases repackaged as news, boosterism dressed up as reporting, and silence where accountability used to be.
I started Wake Forest Matters because I believe this town deserves better. Not opinion. Not spin. Not content designed to make someone feel good about a ribbon cutting. Accountability journalism. The kind that starts with public records and ends with the truth, whether or not that truth is convenient for the people in charge.
I am trained in intelligence collection and analysis. I spent a decade in the military learning how to find information, verify it, and deliver it to people who need it to make decisions. I spent the years after that applying those skills to elections, political violence, and threats to democratic institutions. Now I am applying them here, to the place that matters most to me.
Advertisement
This is not a hobby. This is not a blog. This is a newsroom with one purpose: to tell Wake Forest the truth about itself.
What You Can Expect
I will follow the money. I will read the budgets, the audits, the contracts, and the meeting minutes. When something does not add up, I will tell you. When public officials act in the public interest, I will tell you that too. I am not here to tear anyone down. I am here to make sure the people of this town have the information they need to govern themselves.
I will make mistakes. When I do, I will correct them publicly and promptly. I will never publish something I cannot support with evidence. I will never hide behind anonymity—my name is on everything I write, and I stand behind it.
You may not always agree with what I publish. That is fine. Agreement is not the goal. An informed community is the goal.
I am Tom Baker IV. I am a veteran, an intelligence professional, an election security specialist, a journalist, and a Wake Forest native. I built this because no one else was going to, and because this town—my town, deserves to know what is happening in its own backyard.
Tom Baker IV is the publisher of Wake Forest Matters, Wake Forest's only independent local newsroom. A Wake Forest native, Navy veteran, and intelligence professional, Tom launched Wake Forest Matters to bring serious accountability journalism to his hometown. Tips and story ideas: publisher@wakeforestmatters.com
