State Rep. Jon Conrad, R-Mountain View, has no illusions about the uphill battle he faces for getting reelected in Tuesday’s general election as a write-in candidate.
“It’s an unbelievably heavy lift,” Conrad said.
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.
A majority of voters still aren’t highly engaged in politics and with a high-stakes presidential race the main attraction on Tuesday’s ballot, there will be a sizable contingency of voters that likely have little to no familiarity with the legislative candidates they’re voting on. Another large contingency will also likely vote for Republican candidates down the ballot in allegiance with former President Donald Trump’s campaign.
Under Wyoming law, if a candidate loses in the primary election, they aren’t allowed to have their name printed on election ballots for the general election in the same year.
Moral Satisfaction
After losing his House District 19 Republican primary race in August, Conrad decided to mount a formal write-in campaign after receiving pressure from others to do so and to correct what he saw as some of the misinformation and lies told about him during his primary election race against challenger Lyman resident Joe Webb. Setting the record straight, Conrad said, is one of the main reasons he’s been running a full-on campaign this fall that has served as a continuation of his primary election.
“I just want the facts out there,” Conrad said. “I felt there was so many pieces of disinformation, misinformation and propaganda against me in the primary, I needed to set the record straight.”
After spending $36,896 on his primary campaign, Conrad spent another $31,678 on his general election write-in campaign this fall. Conrad has been door knocking on an almost daily basis and spent a significant amount of money on mailers and Facebook advertising in addition to writing individual letters and place phone calls to constituents.
When reached on Monday morning, Conrad told Cowboy State Daily he’s ready for the campaign season to be over.
Cody resident and Sleeping Giant Ski and Zip owner Nick Piazza is running a write-in campaign on behalf of his lifelong friend Cody Mayor Matt Hall, who lost in the House District 24 Republican primary to fellow challenger Nina Webber by about 170 votes.
Hall isn’t participating in the campaign, as to avoid the perception of being a sore loser, but Piazza is taking the effort very seriously, paying for a full-page newspaper ads as well as campaigning for Hall on Facebook through his Sleeping Giant business and other local business collaborations.
Piazza hopes to right a wrong he sees in the fact that only about 10% of the local population participated in the primary election. A green card holder in Ukraine, Piazza said if a similar scenario played out there the election would likely be looked at as a huge scandal and a fraudulent election.
“This in my opinion is an exercise in democracy,” Piazza said. “I don’t think it’ll change anything, but I think it’ll at least be a reasonable, fair election.”
Piazza is also frustrated that Republican in-fighting has taken over the GOP and believes most Republicans agree on about 95% of the issues, mentioning the collaborative process that took place to help Cody secure a state-run shooting complex. Piazza sees the divisiveness within the GOP as a distraction from the real issues at hand, which he referred to as a “sugar high” approach that dilutes the quality of the candidate pool.
“At a certain point you’re going to run out of Republicans to devour and everybody knows if you feed kids a bunch of sugar, eventually they fall over,” Piazza said.
Casper resident Gina Douglas is running as a write-in candidate for House District 37 after not running in the primary election. Douglas has been involved in a variety of grassroots campaigns including working extensively against Casper Republican Rep. Jeanette Ward’s campaign during the primary election.
After having conversations with her Rep. Steve Harshman, R-Casper, Douglas felt that Harshman was making too many capitulations to the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and not representing the issues that matter most in Wyoming. Harshman ran unopposed in the primary, and also has no formal opponent in Tuesday’s election.
“Wyoming has lost our democracy, and we have one party that’s so firmly entrenched, they don’t care what you think,” Douglas said. “People have been sucked into the idea that Republicans are more patriotic.”
Douglas, a registered Democrat who’s billing herself as a nonpartisan candidate, has also been taking the campaign very seriously despite acknowledging the long shot odds, door knocking extensively. If elected, Douglas wants to pass Medicaid expansion and legalize medical marijuana.
“Why are we not talking about these issues?” Douglas questioned. “Why are we talking about illegal migrants voting? Why are we talking about protecting women and girls in restrooms instead of Medicaid expansion, marijuana reform?”
An ad for write-in candidate Matt Hall of Cody. (Courtesy Photo) 
Casper resident Gina Douglas is running as a write-in candidate in House District 37. (Courtesy Photo) 
Cody resident Nick Piazza posted this selfie after early voting for Matt Hall as a write-in candidate. (Courtesy Photo) 
Cody resident Nick Piazza has been making T-shirts with this graphic emblazoned on them on behalf of Matt Hall’s write-in campaign. (Courtesy Photo)
Low Primary Turnout Gives Hope
There was rather poor public participation in the August primary, with only about 27% of the state’s eligible voters casting a ballot. This gives hope to all of the write-in candidates that a big turnout for Tuesday’s election could help their chances when considering turnout for presidential elections is always higher than the primaries.
“People do not realize with the low voter turnout, was that representative of the public?” Conrad questioned.
Only about 1,800 people cast a vote in Conrad’s race in August, which he lost by 220 votes. If all of the 9,459 people who cast a ballot in Uinta County for the election in 2020 were to do so again on Tuesday, it’s not out of the complete realm of possibility that Conrad could close his margin against Webb.
A similar scenario could play out In Park County, where there were 2,650 votes cast for Hall’s race with Webber in August. In 2020, there were 16,815 votes cast in the Park County general election.
Douglas, a transgender woman, has also been encouraged by the response she’s received when door knocking, saying about three out every four people she’s spoken to support her campaign.
“People are treating me like a normal person, that’s a victory in itself,” Douglas said.
Harsh Reality
The biggest obstacle write-in candidates face is getting the voters to remember their name on Election Day. To help fight this roadblock, Conrad and Douglas have been both sending mailers and other information explaining to voters how and where to write their names in.
Very few write-in candidates have been elected in American history, but there are a few exceptions. One of the most famous examples is Senator Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who lost her primary race for U.S. Senate in 2010 but later won after a successful write-in campaign in the general election.
Rep. Ember Oakley, R-Riverton, said she was approached by a group of supporters to run a write-in campaign after she lost her reelection bid to Republican challenger Joel Guggenmos in August. Oakley was frank with her supporters that an organized campaign would have to come forward before she would take any part in it.
“I said, ‘I’m not going to start running another campaign until I see where it goes,’” Oakley said.
Although the group did pay for a few local advertisements on the radio and online, their efforts fell a bit short of what Oakley wanted to see in order to get back on the campaign trail.
Conrad, Piazza and Douglas all said if their campaigns post a competitive result on Tuesday they’ll consider that a moral victory and recognize their chances are low.
Sometimes in politics, it’s about playing the long game and earning name recognition with the voters over multiple elections. Douglas sees her write-in campaign as setting the stage for a more formal campaign in 2026.
“I’m building up momentum to beat him next time,” Douglas said.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
