Politics always involves a certain amount of gamesmanship, but this year’s primary election in Wyoming is taking on a heightened level of vitriol that’s manifesting most in and avalanche of political mailers flooding mailboxes around the state.
When it comes to these mailers, there’s not one side that has done everything perfectly or another that has done everything wrong. In short, there’s some equal blame to go around.
For those having their mailboxes stuffed with mailers — and their targets — many have turned from being frustrated by them to angry.
Some of the candidates endorsed in these mailers have had those endorsements renounced.
Make Liberty Win, a Virginia-based group that’s a subsidiary of the Austin, Texas-based conservative Libertarian group Young Americans for Liberty (YAL), has sent out many mailers in Wyoming this election season. The group has generally endorsed candidates more aligned with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
Earlier this year, Young Americans endorsed 15 Wyoming state legislators as part of its Hazlitt Coalition, a network of state legislators throughout the country advocating for principled policies that free markets, protect civil liberties and promote peace.
The University of Wyoming’s branch of YAL has endorsed some causes that contradict with the viewpoints of Freedom Caucus members.
In February, the group sponsored a drug legalization fair. Two months later, the group hosted a meeting discussing how to get former Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the Wyoming ballots.
These are two stances that nearly all of the Wyoming candidates it endorsed do not support, and at some point in recent weeks, YAL took its endorsement of the Wyoming candidates off its website.
State Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, chairman of the Freedom Caucus, was one of these candidates, but said he had “no idea” why the endorsements were taken down.
“I assume at some point they will not be supportive of our efforts because it will come down to that issue (drug legalization) and we’ll be at odds,” Bear said.
Bear also said he was never asked if he could be endorsed by the group.
“I could police a lot of that stuff, but as long as it’s not defaming my character, I don’t really worry too much about it,” he said.
Freedom Caucus Mailers
The Freedom Caucus’ campaign arm has been criticized for its mailers that have claimed certain legislators voted to keep former President Donald Trump off the Wyoming election ballot.
This was a stretch at best as the vote the mailers referenced was a budget footnote to keep Secretary of State Chuck Gray from using state money to file his own lawsuits, in response to Gray’s filing of an amicus brief to keep Trump’s name on the Colorado ballots.
As a result of these mailers, Rock Springs Republican Reps. J.T. Larson and Cody Wylie filed a lawsuit against the Freedom Caucus political action committee.
Bear stands behind the PAC’s actions and said the real question is why the legislators who supported keeping Trump off the ballot hid their votes in a budget footnote.
“Is it going too far for these insiders, the establishment, to hide their votes in a footnote in the budget?” Bear questioned. “If they would like to impugn me or the Freedom Caucus PAC for exposing their votes, maybe they should quit trying to hide them.”
Americans For Prosperity Mailers
Gillette resident Doug Gerard, who runs conservative political ranking website Evidence Based Wyoming, said he’s been most concerned with the campaign efforts of Libertarian group Americans For Prosperity, which is run on a Wyoming level by former state legislator Tyler Lindholm.
Although he admits there’s always a little stretching of the truth in political advertisements, Gerard said the AFP mailers are “way out of bounds.” AFP chose whether it would endorse certain candidates this election season based on whether they conducted themselves civilly during the last legislative session.
AFP has mostly endorsed candidates running in races against Freedom Caucus members and challengers.
Gerard argued that AFP misstated Rep. Mark Jennings’, R-Sheridan, position on school choice by claiming he voted against it. Jennings did vote against the school choice legislation that passed the Legislature this year on third reading and concurrence votes. But that may be because Jennings didn’t believe the legislation did enough to further the school choice cause, not because he opposed it as a whole.
In a different mailer opposing Rep. Allen Slagle, R-Newcastle, AFP said he voted to lock up natural resources. This was in reference to House Bill 69, which would have required landowner approval before the Department of Environmental Quality or the Environmental Quality Council approves any mine permit or reclamation plan. Bear and Gerard described this as a “mischaracterization.”
“Misrepresenting this as ‘locking up natural resources’ is a deliberate attempt to mislead voters,” Gerard said.
Another criticism came on the 2023 House Bill 66, which it described as a mandate on small businesses. In reality, the bill prohibits businesses from requiring its employees to wear masks or receive certain vaccines.
Political mailers have been stuffing mailboxes this election season. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
Political mailers have been stuffing mailboxes this election season. (Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
Political mailers have been stuffing mailboxes this election season. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
Strategy
Gerard paraphrased a famous quote from former President Lyndon B. Johnson that even if something that’s said about an opponent isn’t true, just making the opponent have to address the allegation is a win itself.
Former House Speaker Tom Lubnau agreed in the power of this approach, and said the onus almost always falls on the candidate attacked to defend themselves rather than the one making the attack.
He believes the increasingly partisan news market has made it easier than ever for people to ignore facts they don’t like.
“Our BS detectors are broken,” he said.
Although he prefers their candidates, Gerard said he wouldn’t have approved the Freedom Caucus’ mailers about the Trump votes.
"I wouldn't have done it, there are other things more damning of the liberal side of the Republican party,” he said.
Many cited the 2022 election cycle at the time as having the most political advertising and negativity at the time. Even though this was largely due to the high stakes congressional race between U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman and former congresswoman Liz Cheney, there was some serious contention seen at lower levels like the secretary of state race, where Secretary of State Chuck Gray made false claims about his opponent Sen. Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne, in the critical last few days of the race.
Lubnau said political rhetoric has always been a “contact sport” since the days of the American Revolution. But he also said the quantity of mailers being sent out from out-of-state groups or “out-of-state actors filtering money through in-state groups” is unprecedented this year.
Longtime Wyoming journalist and Cowboy State Daily columnist Joan Barron has been around Wyoming elections since the 1970s and said political mailers have to some degree always played a role. At times, some controverisal pieces of mail came out before opponents had time to address them.
She remembered a particular effort in the waning days of the 1982 U.S. Senate campaign between former Sen. Malcolm Wallop and Democratic challenger Rodger McDaniel, when Wallop was starting to get nervous about the final result. Former Sen. Al Simpson and Rep. Dick Cheney stepped in, sening out a letter on Wallop’s behalf, saying they couldn’t work with McDaniel if he got elected, calling him a “snake in the grass.”
But Barron said the level of vitriol and falsehoods pervading Wyoming’s elections these days are on another level.
“There’s a unique nastyness of it and outright false information,” she said.
Bear said he isn’t terribly concerned about the quantity of mailers being sent out and believes the natural political ecosystem will start weeding out these efforts in the future when they’re deemed to not be effective.
“When they get there, they’re going to quit spending money on it,” he said. “I would leave that up to the market.”
He and Gerard disagree with Lubnau and believe the people of Wyoming are more politically aware than ever.
“People have woken up to what’s going on in the Legislature and they want to do something about it,” Bear said. “Is there too much? Well, if people are engaging in the system that’s what we really want isn’t it?”
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
