Was it something he wrote?

“Are you Gary Sandy?” the man asked.

Sandy said he was, surprised enough at the intrusion that he didn’t think about the death threats he’d been getting.

Sandy said the man lunged, bringing the club down on his head. The intruder turned out to be Burton Day, who’d been starting up a local arm of the Libertarian Party.

Sandy’s wife, in the next room, herded the kids outside, called 911 and yelled for help. Neighbors rushed in and subdued Day, who police later booked for attempted murder and for making threats. Sandy went to the hospital with cuts, bruised ribs and a goose egg on his head.

He’s still not sure what prompted the October 23 attack but said he assumes it was a recent column.

“The only things [the man] said to me were, ‘I’m going to kill you,’ and then, when I had him down, he said, ‘You know you’re going to die, don’t you?’ I said I didn’t even know what for, and he said, ‘Yes, you do,’ ” Sandy said.

Day, who wasn’t available for comment, is being held without bail and could face a life sentence. Neither Woodland Police nor prosecutor Larry Barlly would discuss details or Day’s possible motive.

Since his term as mayor ended six years ago, Sandy has penned a column for the Woodland Daily Democrat. He usually writes about lighter issues, but his October 13 column strongly took issue with a local school-board recall effort, with which some have said Day was associated.

Sandy got the first threatening call the day the column ran. Others followed. Then, someone threw a hammer through the glass door of his communications-consulting office downtown.

That same week, Day allegedly called the Libertarian Party national headquarters with another death threat. Day recently had been named chair of the party’s Yolo County chapter, but the appointment was quickly rescinded, and regional party officials have called Sandy to apologize.

As Day awaited trial in jail, Sandy started writing his column again after taking a couple weeks off: “I wrote that I had difficulty writing about it.”

Sandy was unnerved enough by the whole thing that, after the glass in his office door was replaced, he started keeping the door locked. A sign taped in the window requests that people “please knock.”

“I’m still concerned about what all this portends,” Sandy said. “It’s pretty clear that I was attacked for something I wrote.”