The Wyoming Republican Party will consider a resolution to support an election complaint made against the Wyoming Democratic Party next weekend that Artemis Langford, a transgender woman from Laramie, serving as an Albany County committeewoman.
The Sheridan County Republican Party passed a resolution July 29 to support the complaint made by former Carbon County Republican Party Chairman Joey Correnti to the Secretary of State’s office earlier this summer. Correnti testified at the July 29 meeting, where Sheridan County GOP Vice Chair Tod Windsor said a healthy majority of attendees voted to support the resolution.
The resolution will be considered at the state Republican Central Committee meeting in Laramie next weekend.
Langford Responds
Langford doesn’t understand why the Republican Party is getting involved with Democratic Party affairs.
“I'm not sure why the Sheridan County Republican Party and Mr. Correnti want to be involved in the rules and affairs of the Wyoming Democratic Party and the Albany County Democratic Party,” Langford told Cowboy State Daily in a text message.
Wyoming Democratic Party Chairman Joe Barbuto agrees.
"Apparently, the Wyoming GOP doesn't have enough to do if they're considering this resolution concerning an organization and topic that has nothing to do with their party,” Barbuto said. “Maybe they should reconsider their priorities and focus more on actual issues facing our state rather than waging culture wars and ideological battles."
Interpretations
Correnti and Windsor believe the Democratic Party is taking its own interpretation to state election laws that aren’t specifically spelled out.
“I don’t know how or why the Democrats came to that decision,” Correnti said.
Correnti said that since Langford was born a biological male, a fact that would be designated on Langford’s birth certificate, the Democrat should be ineligible to serve as a committeewoman.
The interpretation is one LGBTQ advocacy groups vehemently oppose.
In his complaint, Correnti provides examples of how terms like “male,” “female” and “woman” are used in state statute. The instance of a transgender person identifying with a particular gender is never addressed in state election law, he said.
“These separate terms have to say something,” Correnti said.
Langford caught national attention this spring when a group of sorority members sued the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority over admitting Langford as the first transgender member of its University of Wyoming chapter.
Langford also was a legislative intern for the Wyoming Democratic Party during the 2023 session of the Wyoming Legislature.
Larger Issue
Correnti doesn’t consider Langford to be a woman, but said if it were up to him to write the laws, he’d allow the Democrat to be a committeewoman, with whom he sympathizes with. He said Democrats should be allowed to “organize any kind of nuthouse that they want to.”
“The Democrats should be able to be as crazy as they want,” he said. “But so should the Republicans.”
Correnti believes political parties should be considered private entities in Wyoming, largely free from state oversight. A recent Wyoming Supreme Court decision took an opposite position, saying political parties in Wyoming must follow state law.
Because of this, Correnti believes the Wyoming Democratic Party is in the wrong in having a transgender committeewoman.
“It was ordered by the courts to give up on that,” Correnti said.
Correnti doesn’t want his complaint to be interpreted as an attack or a “conviction” of the Democratic Party, “but instead to lead to an understanding of the lack of clarity, unconstitutional inequality and gross hypocrisy that exist” in state elections laws that he hopes will lead to future revisions.
He said he believes equality should exist for all, including political parties.
“I cannot state strongly enough that this investigation should not be a witch-hunt of Democrats,” Correnti writes in his complaint. “Nor should it be a damming of one political party, but a path to clear understanding, equal regulation and proper constitutional protection of all political parties, members of both genders and,more importantly, of theconstitutionally recognized and protected members of the entirety of the electorate that populate the private organizations known as political parties.”
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
