Primary election sends Wyoming in 'new direction'

JACKSON — Teton County lawmakers won’t be walking back into the same State Legislature next year.

Although all four of the incumbents from Jackson Hole and Star Valley, Republican and Democrat alike, went unchallenged in last Tuesday’s primaries, the rest of the state was battling it out for hold of the House and Senate.

Some incumbents called it the ugliest campaign season they had ever witnessed, as misleading mailers, dark money and harsh words unsettled the political landscape.

In this election, certain candidates said using negative tactics worked.

Low voter turnout also played a role in primary election outcomes, Rep. Mike Yin, a Jackson Democrat, said. Unofficial early counts from the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office showed the lowest number of voters in nearly a decade.

“The people who were angry and were motivated to be angry by the outside organizational help from the Freedom Caucus came out to vote, and then a lot of other people frankly didn’t,” he said.

Turning tables

Republicans currently have 86 lawmakers sitting at desks in the Capitol in this deep red state. Seven Democrats make up the rest of the 93-member Legislature. But there has been a split among the Republicans that has only grown since 2017.

The anti-establishment Wyoming Freedom Caucus that has been making gains the past few election cycles picked up more seats and put traditional Wyoming Caucus incumbents on their heels.

“Last week’s election results tell us that conservatives have a mandate,” Freedom Caucus Chair John Bear, R-Gillette, said a week after the election. “As evidenced by the ouster of multiple long-term incumbents, the people of Wyoming have spoken. They want real conservative representation that reflects their values, and they deserve nothing less.”

Thirty-two seats are needed to take majority control of the 62-member House. Wyoming Freedom Caucus candidates returning for another term or hoping to bring new faces to state politics now hold 29 seats, according to unofficial election results and reporting by WyoFile.com. The caucus previously held 26 seats in the chamber. Another six seats are in play with Freedom Caucus candidates likely facing Democratic or Independent challengers in the general election.

In contrast, the Wyoming Caucus saw its hold slip. Before the primary election, it had 29 seats and kept its voting bloc strong with a few swing Republicans and Democrats who aligned on certain issues like funding for education and mental health. Following the Aug. 20 primary, the Wyoming Caucus will now hold just 16 seats.

In the Senate, a group of senators and new candidates who are aligned with the Freedom Caucus in the House kept their grasp on power.

Yin said that even though he’s a Democrat, he is concerned about how the shift in the GOP and the Legislature could harm constituents in Teton County and statewide. He lost Republican allies in the Wyoming Caucus who were willing to cross the aisle and work with him on certain bills.

What he fears are moves like the Freedom Caucus killing a bill that would have outlawed child marriages in Wyoming, voting to cut funding for the University of Wyoming and community colleges, pushing to end funding for the suicide hotline and passing “the most extreme abortion ban with no exceptions.”

“It’s a different party than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago,” he said, “and I think that the issues that it highlights are not issues that actually solve problems.”

But some of those issues were popular campaign points for the Freedom Caucus across a state that continues to vote in the new wave of Republicans.

“Our voters have spoken,” Bear said, “and it’s clear that conservatives have a mandate to deliver real property tax reform, achieve transparent state budgeting, eliminate woke and discriminatory DEI from our institutions, protect unborn and born children, and to restore Wyoming’s sovereignty.”

The November general election will decide if the Freedom Caucus will secure an even greater lead, or if Independents and Democrats will fill more seats in the Legislature.

No matter the outcome, factions of the Republican and Democratic parties agree the state is heading in a new direction.

Negative campaigning

Dan Zwonitzer, R-Laramie, who was defeated by Freedom Caucus candidate Ann Lucas after serving in the Legislature since 2005, said national issues are now defining Wyoming campaigns. Former President Donald Trump, immigration and “being too woke” were all topics swirling around.

He also said civility is no longer the status quo.

Eleven candidates who were heavily targeted by negative campaign attacks — including himself and Reps. Tom Walters, R-Casper; Ember Oakley, R-Riverton; and Clark Stith, R-Rock Springs — didn’t want to attack back, he said. His Republican father also lost his GOP primary this year after returning to the Legislature for one term. Rep. Dave Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne, had served for 12 years.

Dan Zwonitzer and others were also the target of mailers that said they voted to take Trump off the state’s election ballot, supported Chinese communists owning property in Wyoming and were against capping property taxes. The mailers raised eyebrows and got attention at a Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee meeting this summer. Secretary of State Chuck Gray said he wouldn’t investigate it until complaints were filed with his office and could see if they held any merit.

Candidates under attack said the mailers weren’t true.

Wyoming Caucus candidates, including Zwonitzer, spoke to political advisers and longtime Wyoming politicos who told them to never attack the opponent. He believed staying focused on his own campaign and running a positive campaign would work. But he lost.

Candidates who succeeded in ousting Freedom Caucus incumbents, like Casper teacher Julie Jarvis, who beat Rep. Jeannette Ward, hit hard.

“After the election cycle, it’s blatantly obvious that negatively campaigning certainly works,” Zwonitzer said. “And that’s how you win, by trashing your opponent with anything you can find to make people angry.”

Similar to Yin, he said those are the voters who turn out in a primary. His message of Wyoming being a great place to live just didn’t resonate.

“It’s sad the Freedom Caucus played to people’s fears,” Zwonitzer said. “And it’s really difficult to play to people’s hopes.”

Some contend the campaign tactics were more than negative.

Speaker Pro Tempore and Wyoming Caucus leader Clark Stith lost his Republican primary bid to Freedom Caucus-endorsed candidate Darin McCann. But in the same county, two other Wyoming Caucus incumbents narrowly survived the primary.

Mailer misinformation

Stith was the target of mailers claiming he sold out to the Chinese Communist Party because he didn’t ban foreign ownership of land, but Stith said such bills would put the energy industry at risk and violate the Wyoming Constitution.

He said there’s no absolute way to know what causes a candidate to lose, although misinformation can’t help.

“I just don’t really have any way of knowing for my race,” he said, adding that he couldn’t pay for polling of constituents. “My opponent worked. But the voters wanted change, and change they will get.”

The Virginia-based PAC Make Liberty Win paid for the mailers attacking Stith. The PAC received $8 million from Young Americans for Liberty, whose biggest goal is to legalize marijuana. More than $370,000 has been spent in Wyoming on Freedom Caucus-endorsed candidates, according to WyoFile.

Reps. Cody Wylie and J.T. Larson, R-Rock Springs, were targets of mailers paid for by the Wyoming Freedom PAC affiliated with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. Stith is representing them in a lawsuit in which he claims the campaigning damaged their reputations.

“A jury will decide if the Wyoming Freedom PAC acted with actual malice in making that false statement,” Stith said. “I think it’s important that people who are active in political advertising know that we believe in vigorous, robust debate, but you can’t make knowingly malicious false statements against people and expect to get away with that.”

He said he knows the Freedom Caucus disagrees.

“They would say, ‘Well, we were just honestly pointing out their voting records, like voting with the liberal Mike Yin on many votes, such as whether to have the shed antler season open early for Wyoming residents,” Stith said. “From their perspective, they thought they were advocating for transparency. In my view, they are making materially misleading, if not false, statements.

“But that’s politics, right? The real question is, how uncivil will it get?”

Bear said the Wyoming Caucus portrayal discredits the work of the Freedom Caucus.

“The mailers sent by Wyoming conservatives were entirely truthful,” he said, “which is why the frivolous defamation lawsuit filed by lawfare-happy legislators will be tossed.

“Attributing electoral failure to any one piece of mail ignores the hard work of the candidates who knocked on thousands of doors, exposed the voting records of their incumbents, and did the hard work to win their races,” he said.

Bear said pointing out the publicly available voting records of lawmakers or making motions for recorded votes on the floor of the Wyoming House is not “ugly politics,” but some lawmakers have been used to hiding their records.

He added that he believes they have been engaging in “ugly politics” for years, as with an FEC complaint filed against Gray when he ran against Sen. Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, for secretary of state in 2022. Another example was when, during this election cycle, Freedom Caucus members were accused of trying to “lock up natural resources” in mailers sent out by Americans For Prosperity.

“Conservatives never seek to silence the speech of others, even when that speech is frustrating,” he said in a statement.

What’s next?

There’s speculation from both sides about how a flip of power in the Wyoming Legislature would play out. The Freedom Caucus is funded by the State Freedom Caucus Network out of Washington, D.C., which is attempting to take over legislatures nationwide. So far the network has successfully secured power in neighboring states such as Idaho and South Dakota.

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus argues that it will represent the interests of its constituents far better than longtime Republican lawmakers have, while traditional conservatives and Democrats warn of possible consequences.

Zwonitzer said he’s ready to see the vision of the Freedom Caucus play out, and then it will be up to voters to decide in 2026 if that’s what they want. But he doesn’t believe that the state can run on anger alone.

“I think people will realize quickly you need some government services,” he said. “We’re already struggling in most of rural Wyoming with funding basic services, fire, police and EMT, the social safety net of behavioral health, Medicaid and Medicare programs.”