It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Wednesday, November 6th. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show with Jake. From 6 a.m. to 10 a.m., Monday through Friday, Cowboy State Daily’s Jake Nichols takes you deeper into the stories that matter - and keeps up with the news, weather and sports in your part of Wyoming. Just tune into Cowboy State Daily Dot Com and join the conversation.
It was a late night Tuesday for election workers around the state of Wyoming. Final reporting in many Wyoming counties didn’t occur until close to midnight, with polling places around the state reporting long lines for those waiting to cast their votes.
There were a number of districts with hotly contested races. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland stayed close to the Clerk’s office in Fremont County in the evening, waiting to find out the winner of the race between Republican Sarah Penn and Democrat Ivan Posey.
But during the day, she spent time at the polling location in Arapahoe, where she found a very engaged group of voters coming out to support Posey, a longtime leader of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, in the race for House District 33.
“I actually tried to vote in Arapaho today on the reservation. I thought it would be faster, um, and it was, it was not faster, because there were so many people either registering for the first time or registering after a hiatus… even though this district has twice as many registered Republicans. Maybe that democratic voting block in some of these reservation towns really came out in full force to support Posey. And then in exit interviews, of course, at Arapaho, it was 100% Posey.”
With his victory, Posey will be the only enrolled tribal member serving on the Wyoming Legislature.
In Albany County, Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz was closely watching two races. The county, which has been leaning more blue in recent elections, voted to retain Democrat Karlee Provenza of Laramie, who won a third term in Wyoming House District 45. She beat Republican challenger Paul Crouch by a more than 2-1 margin.
“Provenza’s district is… one of those few places in Wyoming where the script is flipped in so far as the Republicans going to be the underdog and the Democrats going to be on top, I think it, it centers on the University of Wyoming… Provenza has been well liked in her district for a long time. And you know, her Challenger was kind of a newcomer.”
Democrats also prevailed in the race between incumbent Trey Sherwood, who was challenged by Republican Joe Giustozzi.
“The showing of the Republican was a little bit stronger than it was in Provenza’s race, but it was still pretty handily won by Trey Sherwood, who's returning for a third term, and, you know, she told me she's going to continue to emphasize education and housing, I mean, and those are two huge topics in Laramie.”
Provenza and Sherwood’s victories mean continued stability for Democrats in Albany County. It and Teton County are Wyoming’s only blue-leaning areas.
Read the full story HERE.
Politics reporter Leo Wolfson has been following the race between Sara Burlingame and Jacob Wasserburger, as well as Jen Solis vs. Gary Brown, in Laramie County. He reports that the Burlingame-Wasserburger race was fairly contentious. Both candidates ran aggressive, high dollar campaigns, slinging significant mud and negative mailers against each other.
“Political newcomer Jacob Wasserberger, a Cheyenne resident, beat Democrat Sara Burlingame to earn his spot in the Wyoming Legislature… I talked to Wasser burger after his win, he beat Burlingame by exactly 293 votes. He considers it a big step forward for Wyoming and House District 11, and he's proud to earn the support of his voters.”
Cheyenne resident Gary Brown won the election for House District 41, holding off Democratic challenger Jen Solis.
“Gary Brown believes that the Wyoming State Government spends too much money, and he wants to make drastic property tax cuts as a way of kind of addressing that issue.”
Brown is also firmly anti-abortion and believes people should give birth and put the baby up for adoption if they believe they can’t care for the child.
Wolfson, who orchestrated Cowboy State Daily’s coverage of Tuesday’s election, observed that once all votes were counted, the farther-right faction of the Wyoming Republican Party, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, clinched their majority in the House, over the more moderate Wyoming Caucus.
“They are going to be holding around 35 or so members or people who are politically aligned with the group, which gives them a pretty clear majority in the House. So as we expected, it will be basically deciding time to see what the Freedom Caucus does now that they're finally in power.”
On a national level, Wyoming once again overwhelmingly voted to return former president Donald Trump to office. Politics reporter Leo Wolfson said Wyoming voters created the largest margin of victory for Trump in the nation.
“Trump ended up with 192,576 votes, which represent 71% of the votes cast in the Presidential race in Wyoming. This gives him a 46% win over Vice President Kamala Harris, who ended up with 25% of the vote. 69,508 votes were cast for her.”
Wyoming Senator John Barrasso and Representative Harriet Hageman each won their races against Democratic opponents handily. Wolfson reports that now that this race is behind him, Senator Barrasso faces another vote - this time within the Senate itself.
“This paved the way for the next campaign for Barrasso, which is Senate whip - and it takes on an increasing prominence now that the Republicans have gained majority in the Senate as a result of tonight's election. So he'll be the Senate Whip for the majority party, which is a pretty big deal.”
Property taxes have been a hot topic of debate, both in the Wyoming legislature and on the ballot. Wolfson reports that a constitutional amendment to move residential property taxes into a separate class of taxation in Wyoming passed on Tuesday night.
“Amendment A is the constitutional amendment that creates a separate taxation class for residential properties in Wyoming… I spoke to Lori Urbigkit, who is the main kind of leader behind this effort, and she said she's very pleased and that they did everything they could along the campaign trail to try to get the message out to voters and try to pass this.”
Opponents of the amendment expressed concern that it would actually lead to lawmakers raising tax rates in the future or raising taxes on other sectors like commercial properties to make up for lost revenues.
And to follow up with the success of Cowboy State Daily’s live primary election coverage in August, a panel of Wyoming political experts and special guests spent two hours Tuesday evening discussing the implications of the results of the general election. Executive editor Jimmy Orr said he’s received nothing but positive comments about the live event.
“For two hours we had an interesting and sometimes spirited conversation about Wyoming politics and the state of where we're going. We had great guests, you know, we had Senator John Barrasso. We had representative Harriet Hageman, former Governor Mike Sullivan, former Speaker of the House Tom Lubnau… It was great to have long time NBC TV correspondent Pete Williams on our show… we just had a good group of people that talked about Wyoming issues. And you know, couple of them called me after and said, we need to do more of these. We need to have these conversations that people can see.”
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.
