You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"Probably the most perfect diving form since the vaunted Triple Lindy..."}]

You still here 11 8 23

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>You Still Here? Wednesday, November 8, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Probably the most perfect diving form since the vaunted Triple Lindy...

You Still Here? Wednesday, November 8, 2023

 Probably the most perfect diving form since the vaunted Triple Lindy...

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Politics

Government & Politics

U.S. House candidate Chuck Gray’s recent campaign poll contained subjective attacks, 

images of the poll questions provided to Cowboy State Daily, coupled with an interview,

 that Gray sent a poll by high-profile pollster Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, which worked with President Donald Trump’s campaigns.

The poll showed Gray leading at 21% support, with nine other candidates trailing at 14% and less. There also were 33% who registered as “strong undecided."

The poll also contained a push phase, where recipients received “information” about Gray and two of his opponents, Casper-businessman Reid Rasner and Teton County philanthropist Steve Friess, according to a methodology breakdown included in the poll memo Gray sent Cowboy State Daily.

After the “information” dump, Gray’s percentage points doubled, while Rasner’s and Friess’s sunk.

The “information” comprised bizarre and subjective campaign attacks, a survey recipient told Cowboy State Daily soon after the 

Former state Rep. Ember Oakley, a Republican and former legislator who now lives in Kemmerer, was one of those who took the poll. She sent Cowboy State Daily screenshots she said she took while answering the May 13 survey.

[{"type":"text","text":"'His Family's Wealth'"}]

“Steve Friess is a Jackson Hole elitist who has never held a real job and has lived his entire life off his family’s wealth,” one screenshot says. “The same out-of-touch privilege that leaves him completely disconnected from the struggles of working families in Wyoming.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Friess told Cowboy State Daily prior that he’s worked in finance."}]

He has been active as a philanthropist, and helped form executive order drafts to offer to Trump upon the president’s first inauguration in 2017.

Friess and his wife also founded a Christian school, Jackson Hole Classical Academy, in 2014.

[{"type":"text","text":"Oakley said she found the push poll’s information laughable."}]

“That was straight irony,” she said. “Chuck Gray, as far as I know, and I’ve asked, hasn’t had a career or a real, legitimate job before he got into Wyoming politics."

Gray, who is 36, told Cowboy State Daily prior that he worked in his father’s radio business. He has been in Wyoming politics since at least 2017, when he joined the Wyoming House of Representatives.

“His campaign money and everything, his finances, have been 

,” said Oakley. “To write that Friess is out of touch because he’s lived off his family’s wealth and hasn’t had a real job is, like, describing Chuck.”  

[{"type":"text","text":"Oakley then laughed. "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Friess’s campaign manager declined to comment Monday."}]

The “information” the poll reportedly dispatched about Rasner contained more objective information, but at least one subjective theory and some loaded framing.

“Reid Rasner married his gay husband in New York, hyphenated his name like a Hollywood celebrity, then divorced him in Wyoming and hit him with a strict gag order — banning his ex-husband from using his name mentioning his job, or even referring to details of their marriage on podcasts or social media,” says one of the screenshots.

While many of those facts are correct, nothing in the court documents that underpin them accuses Rasner of behaving “like a Hollywood celebrity.”

Rasner had married a man in New York, New York in 2012, and the pair divorced in 2020, Wyoming court documents show.

 the pair not to make derogatory comments about one another. After the ex-husband took to his podcast and the Internet to talk about Rasner, the judge ordered the 

 man to show cause, then issued a stipulated order in 2022 containing numerous specific bans.

“Defendant shall never insinuate any facts about plaintiff that would negatively impact his type of employment as a financial planner” or say other, certain salacious things about him, the judge ordered.

Rasner’s campaign spokesman did not respond by publication to a text message request for comment.

[{"type":"text","text":"‘Propaganda’"}]

Gray told Cowboy State Daily on Monday that the “information” in the poll included “different points on our records.”

Later when confronted with the screenshots, Gray didn’t outright confirm the content, but he said that the initial ballot test — from which he scored 21% 

 from the 400-person hypothetical election the poll posits — was given “before any prompts.”

“The initial ballot test is the key,” he said. “This is the standard in all polling.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Oakley called it propaganda.  "}]

“I think the technical term is called push polling,” she said. “It’s just done for propaganda and for campaign reasons.”

In the prompts, said Oakley, “they clearly were just writing things that were inflammatory.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Too Early Anyway"}]

Rob Wallace, a longtime Wyoming politico, cast skepticism on a poll conducted so early in the race even before the screenshots with the bizarre prompts surfaced.

Wallace served as assistant secretary to the U.S. Department of the Interior during the first Trump administration and years prior worked multiple political campaigns as an advisor for the late U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop. 

He also ran for Congress in 1994 and finished second in a crowded primary to Rep. Barbara Cubin.

“Polling this early in the campaign is like endorsements,” he said. “It’s good to have favorable information, but the real part of the race isn’t going to get going until probably after the Fourth of July.”

The filing period for candidates ended Friday, and the primary election is Aug. 18.

Wallace also hesitated to attach significance to the poll since the “information" the Fabrizio team gave voters was unknown.

“Without really understanding all the pieces of the poll, it’s hard to give a complete assessment of what it means,” he said.

Now that the filing period has ended, the other nine candidates in the Republican U.S. House primary race are going to burst into public view as much as they can, Wallace said.

Between the poll and the filing deadline, two more candidates registered: Keith Goodenough and Richard Dodson.

[{"type":"text","text":"That puts the primary race at 10 contenders."}]

Whoever wins that race will have to face the Democratic candidate, plus the Libertarian nominee Shawn Johnson, who 

“There are a couple reasons for putting a favorable poll out” at this phase, said Wallace. One reason could be to dissuade others from running; and another could be to reassure one’s base and supporters.

“It’s like a good-news story for the people you want to attract,” he added.

[{"type":"text","text":"The big unknown, said Wallace, is what Trump will do."}]

The president has endorsed Megan Degenfelder for governor over her GOP opponents.

[{"type":"text","text":"He has not endorsed anyone in the crowded U.S. House primary race."}]

Friess, Rasner, Gray, Balow, and Biteman all have dispatched messaging indicating alignment with Trump.

[{"type":"text","text":"Rasner and Gray tout themselves as MAGA-style candidates."}]

Biteman has for years had a collaborative relationship with the president, he’s told Cowboy State Daily prior.

Christensen is a strong outlier there: he condemned the president’s April social media post of an AI-generated image depicting Trump as a Jesus-like figure, healing an ailing man while others circle him in gestures of prayer.

A Trump endorsement, said Wallace, “could be a game-changer if he decides to do it. And maybe he won’t — maybe he won’t endorse anybody.”

Chuck gray 6 1 26

<title>Chuck Gray’s U.S. House Poll Leveled Disparaging Remarks Against Rasner, Friess | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The poll U.S. House candidate Chuck Gray touted Monday leveled disparaging claims about opponents Reid Rasner and Steve Friess. It claimed Friess "never had a real job" and Rasner acted like a "Hollywood celebrity" during a marriage to "his gay husband."
 

Chuck Gray’s U.S. House Poll Leveled Disparaging Remarks Against Rasner, Friess

Julie Mankin

Crime & Courts

A Wyoming barrel racer was stunned to learn that the 17-year-old girl accused of stabbing three horses during a major rodeo event in Las Vegas over the weekend was the same rider who tried to borrow one of her horses.

“About a month ago, I got a message from a girl asking if I had a horse she could run,” said Lora Nichols of Pavillion. “I said no, and she kept asking about each of my specific horses. 

“This weekend I looked to see if it was the same girl they arrested. It was! It makes my skin crawl to realize she was stalking my horses, too. It could have been me just as easily.”

Nichols, who has earned more than $400,000 competing on the half-brother brother of one of the stabbed horses, said she’s especially horrified by the attack.

Along with Nichols, Wyoming’s rodeo community is shocked and appalled by the Tonya Harding-like violent rampage that left the three barrel racing horses stabbed multiple times.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"What Happened"}]

Las Vegas police report that the 17-year-old barrel racer was arrested in connection the attack on the horses of competitors.

The girl is accused of stabbing each of the horses multiple times inside their stalls during 

the NBHA Professional’s Choice Vegas Super Show at the South Point Equestrian Center.

The attack came just hours after one of the horses — a 6-year-old gelding named Saaul Good — had carried 20-year-old Hailey Krahenbuhl to a first-place paycheck of $1,805. 

The horse, which Krahenbuhl calls “Sully,” has shattered arena records this season and racked up $238,388 in earnings in less than four years competing. 

“Sully was stabbed multiple times last night,” Krahenbuhl posted to her Facebook page on Saturday. “I have no words. He is stitched up and in recovery.” 

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department reports that officers received a report at around 2:07 a.m. Saturday that a horse had been injured inside a South Point barn. 

When officers arrived, they learned three horses had been “intentionally injured with a sharp object” believed to be a knife, police say.

Veterinarians reportedly cleaned and sutured deep blade lacerations to Sully’s flank and shoulder. 

Another competitor named Keira Weisbart confirmed on social media that her horse, Rocket, was stabbed three times and had other “stab attempts around his body.” 

That horse was reportedly treated and released at the scene.

A third stabbed horse, however, underwent emergency surgery to repair muscle tissue damage. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Detail’s Ordeal"}]

Southern California barrel racer Arielle Phillips owns that third horse, a mare she calls Detail was stabbed multiple times.

, Phillips described the arrested teen as “a crazy obsessed stalker who has been following me on social media for a long time, obsessing over Detail, obsessing over meeting me.”

Phillips said she’d arrived back at the South Point barn to find the suspect hosing off Detail’s wounds.

“Cameras verified her entering our stalls,” wrote Phillips. “I can’t even put into words the pain I feel for my mare and for Hailey’s Sully.”

She said the attack has also affected her horse.

“Detail is traumatized,” Phillips wrote. “Every time she runs away from the approach of my hand, I burst into tears. This is my best friend. An innocent sweet horse was brutally tortured for no reason.”

While all three horses are expected to recover, they are sidelined for the near future and aren’t able to compete.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Champion Lineage"}]

Krahenbuhl, the daughter of a Las Vegas landscaper who grew up about 15 minutes from The Strip, had plans to hit the rodeo road with Sully — whose sire Winner’s Version has produced earners of more than $7 million — and make an NFR run in 2027. 

“We were a match from the beginning and my dreams became reality, all thanks to him,” she wrote prior to the attack from Globe Life Field during the $3 million American Rodeo. 

 to help with at veterinary for all three of the horses.

Nichols said she knows those other girls and is heartbroken for them and their horses.

“I’ve competed alongside Hailey a lot, and she’s an amazing human being,” said Nichols. “I think of the raw emotion and just the blood, sweat and tears she’s put in ­— you know, how hard she’s worked to get there. 

“When I heard it was her horse, I was just sick to my stomach.”

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, detectives located the suspect at a nearby hotel and took her into custody.

“She was transported to Clark County Juvenile Hall, where she was booked on 12 counts of willful or malicious killing, maiming or torturing of an animal and three counts of felony malicious destruction of private property over $5,000,” investigators told KTLA 5 Morning News.

Because of her age, official law enforcement sources have not identified the suspected publicly.

Veteran barrel racers have over the years heard rare rumors of winning horses being poisoned, but a brazen rash of stabbings is a first. 

Nichols said the incident makes her think of a made-for-TV movie in which the stalker ends up booked for murder. 

She’s also grateful the suspect wasn’t targeting the girls themselves.

“I just think we’re sheltered from that so much in our world,” added barrel racer and Gillette College rodeo coach racer Casey Rae Sellers. “The youth in our industry are pretty dang good kids. This is so out-of-character for the Western industry.”

Horses stabbed Krahenbuhl and Sully at The American 6 1 26

<title>Wyoming Barrel Racer Says She Was Approached By Alleged Horse-Stabber | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Wyoming barrel racer was stunned to learn that the teen girl accused of stabbing three horses in Las Vegas over the weekend tried to borrow one of her horses last month. “It makes my skin crawl to realize she was stalking my horses, too,” she said.

Wyoming Barrel Racer Says She Was Approached By Alleged Horse-Stabber

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

A Torrington family is in shock after finding their mutilated dogs partially submerged in the North Platte River outside of Torrington.

Angelica Garcia told Cowboy State Daily on Monday that two rottweilers owned by her parents had gotten loose from their home Friday and hours later were found dead by a woman and her son who were walking by a popular fishing spot on the river.

Garcia said the discovery of the two dogs named Django and Hera left her stunned.

"The top of Django's head was gone and Hera's neck and chest were gone," Garcia said.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"They were family dogs. I trusted them around my kids,\" she added."}]

Goshen County Sheriff Kory Fleenor confirmed Monday that his office has an open investigation into the incident. 

He declined to comment on whether investigators have determined a cause of death, whether any suspects or persons of interest have been identified, or what evidence investigators have gathered, citing the active nature of the case.

Garcia said her parents last saw the dogs late Friday morning after letting them outside near their Torrington home.

The two rottweilers, a brother and sister who were both nearly 6 years old, had occasionally gotten loose before and were familiar to many people in town, Garcia said.

When her father realized the dogs had not returned, he began searching for them. A short time later, the family learned the dogs had been found dead near the North Platte River.

[{"type":"text","text":"Questions Remain "}]

Garcia said her family believes the dogs were unlawfully killed and wants investigators to thoroughly examine what happened.

She said relatives have searched for information, spoken with people in the area where the dogs were found and tried to learn whether anyone witnessed the incident.

[{"type":"text","text":"So far, she said, they have found no eyewitnesses."}]

"We're drawing a blank as to what happened," Garcia said. "Or why it happened." She added that on top of being concerned the dogs were shot, she's concerned "it happened in the city." 

 that accuses authorities of not doing enough to investigate the deaths.

"Whoever did this brutally murdered these dogs, took their collars and drug them off and dumped their bodies in the river," the petition reads.

"There is a lead and law enforcement is refusing to look further and do their job," it reads.

The Torrington Police Department also responded after the dogs were found, according to Garcia. 

She said city police helped direct the case to the sheriff's office because the location where the dogs were discovered fell under county jurisdiction.

Torrington Police Chief Matt Johnson did not return a request for comment.

[{"type":"text","text":"A Gruesome Discovery"}]

Garcia began to choke up when she described the condition of the dogs and added the collars on the dogs were missing.

[{"type":"text","text":"The family believes the dogs were killed with a shotgun. "}]

One question repeatedly raised online is whether Wyoming law allows people to shoot dogs under certain circumstances.

 does permit dogs to be killed if they are running livestock and the livestock has been injured or is threatened with injury. The law also shields the person who kills the dog from liability if the danger or damage can be shown.

So far, however, authorities have not publicly indicated whether livestock played any role in the deaths of Django and Hera.

The dogs were known to "get out," said Garcia, "and they would kind of roam around, but nobody ever really made a big deal about it." 

"They would just call the dog catcher or local PD, and they would tend to joke about it, like they're just really nice dogs, and you know, even when they picked them up, the dog catcher was appalled at what happened, because she knew them, you know," she said.

Garcia added that she doesn't think the dogs were bothering livestock, "They would never go after cattle or anything like that." 

Rottweilers 6 1 26

<title>Torrington Family Says Rottweilers Were Mutilated And Dumped In The River  | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Torrington family is in shock after finding their mutilated dogs partially submerged in the North Platte River. Angelica Garcia said one dog's head was removed and the other was missing its neck and chest. "They were family dogs," she said.

Torrington Family Says Rottweilers Were Mutilated And Dumped In The River 

Opinion

CSD Columnists

Hear the ramblings of a convert to forbidden ways. 

I’ve had long hair since I was 3 years old. I was told it was lovely. I was crimped, curled, braided and chignoned. 

Consider the months of my life I’ve spent fixing my hair!

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Some of these were rites of passage. "}]

Age 8: Aquanet is fuel. My sister turned me into a human bomb.  

Age 12: I shared concealer cream with a friend after we both burned our foreheads with curling irons while prepping for a dance. 

Age 19: My wedding day, my hair rebelled. The injustice of having to worry about such a trivial, stupid thing hit me sideways, and I cried. My Aunt Tricia rushed into the room with a pick comb before the tears could mar my makeup. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Then came Sunday. "}]

The caprice, the suspicion that anything is possible started in my spine and crept up to my brain stem. Finally, my frontal lobe. It resembled faintly the opening pages of “Crime and Punishment” except I didn’t want to axe-murder anyone. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"I wanted to cut off my hair. "}]

I showered. Shampooed and conditioned. Raked my fingers through the oblong mane. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Why? I wondered. "}]

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a short story called “Bernice Bobs Her Hair,” about an awkward girl who asks her cousin for advice on speaking to men. 

Start by saying something controversial, like you’re thinking about bobbing your hair, answers the glamorous cousin. 

Bernice does, but she also flirts with her cousin’s boyfriend, which is an Absolutely-Not Move. 

So the cousin calls Bernice’s bluff, gathers all their beaux and takes Bernice to the hairdresser’s - where the girl receives an unbecoming bob. 

In the night, Bernice slices off her cousin’s hair as revenge.

When men read that story, they think it means don’t make boasts you can’t fulfill. 

When women read it, they think it means don’t cut your hair.

But in between modest trims and layerings, I’ve been growing out my hair for more than 30 years. 

“Get one of those apps, you know, that can tell you how you’d look with different hairstyles,” advised The Husband on Sunday. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“OK,” I nodded. "}]

Sure, these three decades I grew it out because I was scared to cut it, I felt it looked feminine; I harbored stereotypes about hair length that I still haven’t parsed into words. 

But on Sunday, the wayward impulse had already gripped me. The decades of fussing with my hair, worrying how it looks and pouring my life into it had compounded into a load I could no longer shoulder. At least, not with all this other grownup stuff like raising kids, fixing toilets, wondering what’s the culinary equivalent of fennel. 

I conflated my hair with everything worrisome. Every Sisyphean task I’ve known. 

I thought of the books I haven’t read and the gardens I haven’t grown. 

I wondered why it’s been so important to show the world I have a lot of dead stuff streaming from my scalp, and that this dead stuff can curl. These dead brown grasses are poofier than other people’s dead brown grasses. 

Oh, look at me, look at me... Even though I’m just one mortal in the vast aggregate mosaic. A mere shard of the masterpiece. 

I walked into the bathroom and cut One. Longish. Angled. Bob. 

Don’t worry, a YouTube-video woman with purple hair and bleached eyebrows showed me how to do it right.  

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"I laughed out loud. "}]

“What the – Clair!” said The Husband. “You cut off your hair!”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“I KNOW!” I chirped, grinning. "}]

“It looks – “ he hesitated. Looked twice. Looked again. “It actually looks 

I am struck by how one simple change to this stupid scalp foliage can change everything else. 

At the store I see women with tight braids and think, “Oh poor dear, you’ve tangled up parts of yourself into knots.” 

I go to loop my keys’ lanyard around my neck and push one palm upward against the back of my head – to lug my hair out of the way – but there’s no resistance. My hand shoots up and palms the sky.

For decades the hair ties have perturbed me. Edgar Allen Poe has no idea. 

Where’s my hair tie? What if I need it? Did I overstretch it? Did I lose it? Why don’t I feel that comforting pressure on my wrist, of a hair tie in waiting? 

Oh, guess what. That doesn’t matter now. Neither does mousse, neither do hot curlers. 

I enter rooms - enter life - like a boxer entering the ring. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"How’s my hair? "}]

Clair McFarland writes: "But the wayward impulse had already gripped me. The decades of fussing with my hair, worrying how it looks and pouring my life into it had compounded into a load I could no longer shoulder. At least, not with all this other grownup stuff."

You Still Here? Wednesday, November 8, 2023

In case you missed it

More in You Still Here

Bonus Video 2: Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Today In Ice Cream: Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Today In Barbecue: Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Today In Law Enforcement: Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Most read