A group of Fremont County Republican legislative candidates have declined invitations to a series of candidate debates, drawing a public rebuke this week from local GOP leadership.
“My concern is that if Tim Salazar, Pepper Ottman, Tina Clifford and Joel Guggenmos will not face voter questions before the election, will they listen to us if elected?” Fremont County GOP Chairman Scott Harnsberger said.
The issue began earlier this month when those candidates and a fifth, Rep. Sarah Penn, R-Lander, placed an advertisement in the Dubois Frontier.
“As conservative Republican candidates, we will not engage in any forums with the League of Women Voters,” according to the ad signed by Sen. Salazar, R-Riverton; Reps. Ottman, R-Riverton, and Penn, R-Lander; as well as challengers Guggenmos and Clifford.
All five are running to represent Fremont County communities in the Legislature, and the three incumbents are either members or allies of the hard-line Freedom Caucus.
Ottman initially accepted the invite but then dropped out, organizers told WyoFile, while Penn had not been invited since her primary race is uncontested.
Otherwise, they’d each been invited to participate in Republican forums in Shoshoni, Dubois and Lander throughout July — all of which had been organized by the Fremont County GOP, Republican Women of Fremont County, the Fremont County Democratic Party and the League of Women Voters of Fremont County.
But the rub with the forums, according to the candidates’ newspaper ad, is the league’s national organization. More specifically, the candidates pointed to the league’s positions on abortion, voter identification, semiautomatic weapons and former President Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“These positions are opposed to our conservative values. We are not confident that the League is non-partisan as the League claims,” the ad states, echoing a national trend of candidates on the right turning against the organization and snubbing their invites.
While the Fremont County chapter of the league got its start just four years ago, the national organization formed in 1920 with the intention of helping newly enfranchised women vote. In the century since, the role of local chapters has evolved to educate voters via hosting debates and conducting candidate surveys. While the organization does not endorse candidates and identifies as nonpartisan, it’s long been considered by some to lean progressive.
But that’s all besides the point, according to Harnsberger.
The format, topics and questions for the upcoming forums were crafted with a Republican lens and are reflective of the party’s platform, Harnsberger said.
“I have been involved in local Republican politics for almost 40 years. I have never seen a group of individuals running for office that were ‘too conservative’ to answer questions in front of Republican voters about education funding, property tax reform, rural health care and state spending,” Harnsberger said.
It’s important for voters to hear candidates speak their minds in an unscripted setting like a debate, Harnsberger said.
WyoFile did not receive a response from Salazar, Ottman, Penn, Guggenmos or Clifford to several written questions by press time.
They are not the only Republican candidates in Wyoming to avoid debates this election cycle. Wyoming PBS canceled a debate set for next month after U.S. Sen. John Barrasso and U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman declined to participate, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reported earlier this week.
Collaborating on events
When the league first contacted Harnsberger earlier this summer to ask if the local GOP would want to help organize the debates, Harnsberger said he was skeptical “when my goal is to nominate Republican candidates that will win the election in November.”
But the league representatives said they would defer to him and Tara Berg, president of the Republican Women of Fremont County, “regarding the format of the events and the topics of all questions asked. The League would then pay for all of the promotion, provide some manpower, and live-stream each event,” Harnsberger said.
And that’s exactly how things went, Harnsberger added.
“In the end, we have worked out a format and drafted questions that meet our goal of educating Republican voters.”
The league’s Michelle Escudero said she’s also happy with how organizing efforts went. Once the four organizations agreed to collaborate, they formed a committee and got to work.
“All of us read and became familiar with the Republican platform. And that was a particular request, which seems appropriate considering these are Republican candidates,” Escudero said. “The Republican Party had final say on all questions, but no negotiating needed to happen, because we all were super pleased with the final list of questions.”
The league in Fremont County has traditionally put on forums for the general election, but Escudero said it switched things up this year in light of so few Democrats running for office.
Ahead of the primary, Escudero said the debates “provide an even platform for all candidates to put forth their ideas and their platform in a very neutral setting.”
It also gives voters something they won’t get from candidate advertisements, which offer “a very limited amount of information,” Escudero said.
“Fremont County citizens, they have the desire, they have the right to have information from these candidates,” Escudero said. “And by not participating, those candidates are infringing on those rights.”
While the five candidates won’t be attending the forums, each one filled out the league’s candidate guide.
Most Popular
Comments / 0