It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Tuesday, November 5th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by 4 Wyoming Pack. 4 Wyoming Pack says, “This November, Wyoming will vote to allow residential homes to be taxed at a lower, fairer rate, even the playing field, and give families a much-needed break.” 4 Wyoming Pack wants you to Vote Yes on Amendment A.
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It’s finally election day, and Cowboy State Daily is giving viewers an opportunity to hear discussion on the races and issues that matter to Wyomingites in real-time.
From 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. this evening, I’ll be hosting a panel of political experts - and welcoming special guests to the conversation. Editor Jimmy Orr says the response to our primary election night coverage in August was so positive that it made sense to offer it in November as well.
“We had a great panel of political observers, those who have been in the political world forever. We had two… former governors on. We had the congressional delegation… Now, people have said that in Wyoming, the primary is the big election, and that's true, but there are some contested races out there that we will be covering, and we will have information in real time… we'll also be talking about Wyoming politics and what's happening here, and another All Star panel of of politicos and an all star guest list. We're really excited.”
Tune in to Cowboy State Daily Dot Com at 8 p.m. tonight for live election coverage.
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There’s been a running feud between Secretary of State Chuck Gray and Gov. Mark Gordon, in which Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder has typically sided with Gordon on most issues. That is, until Monday.
That’s when Degenfelder sharply criticized the governor for moving forward with the sale of a pristine 640-acre parcel of land in Teton County known as the Kelly Parcel directly to Grand Teton National Park for $100 million. Politics reporter Leo Wolfson has the story.
“Degenfelder has been a member of a task force dedicated to trying to find a land exchange for the Kelly parcel that would involve swapping land in a different part of Wyoming, the Powder River Basin, for mineral rights in kind of a trade off deal, rather than just selling the land to the federal government outright.”
A spokesman for Governor Gordon's Office said that the board could easily take the motion to sell the Kelly Parcel at public auction off the table at Thursday’s meeting, which would then allow the board to decide its next steps.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming’s unseasonably warm weekends are officially over. Another wave of cold weather will envelop Wyoming this week, making it cold enough for overnight temperatures to dip into the single digits.
Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that the winter weather patterns moving into the Western U.S. are getting bigger and busier.
“I think people are still adjusting to how abrupt things seem to be. I mean, we were having daytime highs in the 70s, just like last week, and now we're getting overnight temperatures in the teens and single digits, but that's just what's happening with these weather patterns… Don Day has already called for a longer, colder, snowier winter, and we're starting to get into the weeks and the months where that really matters.” While the change from unseasonably warm weeks persisted into late October, those days are over for the season. Anyone who hasn’t winterized their homes, vehicles and wardrobes will want to do so as quickly as possible.
Read the full story HERE.
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Armenian wildlife rangers did practically everything wrong a couple of weeks ago when they released a brown bear, and they’re lucky nobody got killed.
That’s what Wyoming grizzly experts told outdoors reporter Mark Heinz about a viral video that shows a 2-year-old male Armenian brown bear, a close relative of Wyoming grizzlies, turn and charge right for the ranger who lifted the gate on the bear’s cage.
“When we capture bears here in Wyoming or Montana in this area, we're a lot more careful. We don't have some dude standing in the back of a pickup throwing the gate up. We activate the gate remotely. And another guy, one of the guys I spoke with here in Wyoming, pointed something out. He said that from what he can tell, he's betting that the bear was coming down off the tranquilizers. Because he said, when those bears first wake up from being tranqed… they are not in a happy place.”
Heinz says that bears that are trying to wake up from a tranquilizer nap are known to be extremely grouchy.
Read the full story HERE.
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The public library in Gillette is disbanding its “new adult” section, which detractors said became a place for the library’s more questionable content.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the section - with just a few sparse titles - had been placed in a part of the library that some patrons felt was less safe; and the books that were located in that section were highly controversial.
“Some detractors have called the books in that section the books of shame, because that's where books that are deemed inappropriate for the young adult section go to land. And if you ask some of them, because it's a secluded spot of the library, that's where they go to fester and die.”
Going forward, books that are found inappropriate for the young adult section may be moved to the adult section if they are to remain in the library.
Read the full story HERE.
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Author C.J. Box’s main protagonist, Joe Pickett likes to drink bourbon - and now he will have a thousand bottles named after him.
Box spilled that secret late last week on X (formerly Twitter). Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck spoke to the author Monday, who said he was approached by Wyoming’s Pine Bluffs Distilling about the idea at the Wyoming breakfast at the National Finals Rodeo last year.
“In the book, Joe Pickett drinks bourbon, and so CJ Box agreed to that. And the deal is that CJ gets to choose a charity of his choice, and he chose the Wyoming Hunger Initiative. His wife is on that board, and so there will be coming out in the spring, Joe Pickett bourbon coming from Pine Bluffs Distilling.”
The distillery plans to have the bourbon available in time for Box to release his next novel in the Joe Pickett series, and go on a book tour.
Read the full story HERE.
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Write-in campaigns have a notoriously low rate of success due to the challenge of not only getting someone to vote for you, but also getting them to remember to write your name on the ballot.
Politics reporter Leo Wolfson spoke to several people who are running write-in campaigns in various districts in Wyoming. They told him that they just believe it’s the right thing to do.
“These campaigns are actually taking the process pretty seriously. The most notable that I've seen is State Representative John Conrad in southwest Wyoming… Conrad, who I spoke to, acknowledges that his chances are low… he wants to basically clear the air and set the record straight as far as some of the misinformation and lies that were peddled against him during the primary campaign.”
The three people interviewed by Cowboy State Daily all said that if their campaigns post a competitive result on Tuesday, they’ll consider that a moral victory and recognize their chances are low.
Read the full story HERE.
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Amid an emotionally charged political divide in Wyoming and America where conservatives and liberals can agree on almost nothing, they’ve found common ground on one issue. They all agree it was wrong for government agents to seize and kill a New York man’s social media star pet squirrel named Peanut.
That’s what outdoors reporter Mark Heinz discovered when he talked to Wyoming residents about the uproar.
“The guy took the squirrel into his home, raised it for seven years, and started putting it on social media. And Peanut, the squirrel, became a huge social media star… apparently, some people reported him… so they sent agents over, raided his house, took the squirrel and his raccoon named Fred, apparently peanut the squirrel bit somebody in the process. And so out of concern over rabies… they euthanized both peanut the squirrel and Fred the raccoon… you know, and Democrats and Republicans, everybody's supposed to hate each other. But what I'm seeing is everybody is agreeing that they're all really angry about the government taking this guy squirrel from him and then killing it.”
In Wyoming, people can have squirrels as pets, but a permit from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department is required to keep them in captivity. However, Sen. Larry Hicks of Baggs told Cowboy State Daily that he doesn’t worry about Wyoming agents raiding people’s houses over a squirrel.
Read the full story HERE.
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And as a real estate broker with Swan Land Co., Scott Williams has seen a lot of quirky things. But when he was touring a $2.5 million dollar home in the Black Hills of northeast Wyoming, he saw something that surprised even him - an automated lawn mower, mowing the yard all by itself.
And Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that that robot lawnmower isn’t the only cool, technological gizmo in this ‘smart’ mansion located between Moorcroft and Pine Haven.
“Not only is there a robotic lawn mower, but this home has lots of automated features to make the maintenance a breeze. And of course, there is an indoor Roomba, to sweep the floors. But what I thought was cool there is they've created a floating table. So this table has no legs… It's hanging from the ceiling… and they put a lot of thought into all of these features. Everything can be controlled remotely… They thought of everything with this home.”
Jean adds that Real Estate in the Black Hills of northeast Wyoming has started taking off, with people realizing that they can get more luxury for less.
Read the full story HERE.
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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel! And don’t forget to drop in on the Cowboy State Daily morning show with Jake Nichols, Monday through Friday from 6 to 10 a.m.! Thanks for tuning in - I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
