The way some county Republican parties have been conducting elections this spring has triggered controversy across Wyoming, with at least one county party’s election results being disputed.
The dispute comes down to who’s being allowed to cast a vote in these county party elections.
County parties in Wyoming, both Democratic and Republican, are made up of two distinct groups of members- precinct committee members and elected officers, which are sometimes interchangeable. Precinct committee members are elected in the party’s primary elections by registered voters of the party at large, while county party officers are elected within the county party itself into leadership positions.
In 2023, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled that county parties can only allow precinct committee members to vote in their leadership elections as a result of a Uinta County lawsuit, based on state law.
Now, the chief legal counsel for the Wyoming GOP, Brian Shuck, is telling the county parties they can ignore this ruling because he believes the state law is unconstitutional.
Shuck argued in a letter sent to Weston County GOP Chair Kari Drost on March 17 that the Supreme Court should have ruled on the constitutionality of the state law they were upholding rather than whether the Uinta GOP followed the law or not.
“My response to their argument is this: “I will see your statute and raise you a Constitution,” Shuck wrote to Drost. “The U.S. Constitution trumps a conflicting state statute every time. U.S. Supreme Court cases clearly hold that state statutes attempting to govern internal party functions, such as parties enacting bylaws governing the election of their own officers, must be strictly construed under the First Amendment right of Free Association.”
Shuck did not respond to Cowboy State Daily’s request for comment.
At its convention in 2022, the state GOP passed a bylaw that essentially flouted the Supreme Court ruling, clarifying that all elected officers in the positions of chairman, vice chairman, state committeeman, state committeewoman, secretary, and treasurer shall be permitted to vote as full members of the County Central Committee if they are not precinct committee representatives.
Where’s The Integrity
Former Sweetwater GOP Chair Elizabeth Bingham believes this isn’t right.
“At a time when election integrity has become one of the most important issues for the Trump Administration as well as our state and nation, the current Wyoming Republican Party leadership is disregarding both Wyoming state law and a Wyoming Supreme Court ruling in an attempt to rig elections in order to favor insider establishment candidates rather than grassroots winners of primary elections,” Bingham said in a Monday statement.
Although all of this might seem a little dense to the casual observer, the state party central committee’s membership and the decisions they make matter on a public level for the filling of political vacancies in Wyoming.
The political party belonging to the previous holder of the seat, typically Republican in Wyoming, gets to select three nominees for the county commissioners or governor, depending on level of position, to choose from in picking their replacement. The state party helped fill two statewide positions in 2022 alone.
“The State Central Committee is given incredibly important statutory powers, such as choosing who will fill vacancies.” Bingham said, “Senator John Barrasso was first selected to the U.S. Senate after being selected as one of three candidates by the State Central Committee. Governor Mark Gordon and former Secretary of State Ed Buchanan were also put into statewide offices through that same statutory process. Time and time again, the State Central Committee has used this power to fill vacancies.”
What Happened In Hot Springs?
The interpretation of this state law and the party’s conflicting bylaws will directly affect who’s in power in the Hot Springs County Republican Party. In their election held March 17, the county party did not immediately count the two votes made by the elected officers who were not precinct committee members.
As a result, Joe Martinez was elected county party chair.
Martinez, who is not a precinct committee member and didn’t vote in his election, told Cowboy State Daily the majority of their local party decided it wanted to count votes this way after a long discussion. He believes the matter should be determined at a local level.
“Any dispute should be brought to the local level first,” he said.
Cheryl Aguilar, the outgoing party chair, still collected the votes of the two other elected officers, which were collected as provisional votes to be possibly counted at a later time. She declined to comment to Cowboy State Daily about this matter specifically.
If those votes are ruled to be counted by the state GOP’s dispute resolution committee, which is currently considering the matter, Bradyn Harvey would become the new elected chair in Hot Springs, and the person chosen for state committeeman will also change. Aguiar’s new role as state committeewoman will not be impacted.
The dispute resolution committee already ruled earlier this spring that the Park County Republican Party could count these non-precinct committee member votes for its elections, and it and the Sheridan Republican Party conducted their elections in this manner on Monday night, with the final results not changed by either legal interpretation.
Martinez believes the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the state law must be followed.
“The case law is law, you really have to follow it,” he said.
Bingham said the Washakie County GOP was advised by Shuck they could also take this approach in its elections but decided against it, which did not impact the final results.
Many in the state GOP like Shuck and Aguiar have contended that the party should be treated as a fully private organization that can pass any bylaw it wants. That argument holds weight except for the fact that precinct committee members are elected publicly, throwing a public aspect into at least some of the party’s dynamics.
Judicial Deference
The Trump administration has taken a similar stance to Shuck when it comes to adhering to court orders, openly defying some judicial decisions it disagrees with. Although the county party elections hardly match the magnitude of this level of decision making, Aguiar does see them as one and the same in principle.
“With all this lawfare, the tiniest county in the tiniest state is starting to look like Washington, D.C.,” she said.
Aguiar also believes the state’s judges should not be assumed to be ruling in a constitutional manner when considering who the state’s current and last two governors were that appointed them.
“The three arms government all reside under the Constitution,” she said. “The judiciary doesn’t seem to think they’re under it anymore. The Supreme Court felt above it. They do not get to interpret lawlessly.”
Cody attorney David Hill, a Park County GOP precinct committee member who unsuccessfully ran for the state House in 2024, believes the Supreme Court’s ruling can’t simply be ignored at the whim of the party.
“The fact that the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled on the election code means that there is binding, statewide precedent (not merely persuasive rulings),” Hill said in a statement. “Deciding to ignore binding precedent for a minimal chance of challenging a statute (one of the most difficult legal challenges) is unwise and advice to do so is bad advice that is intended to get parties into legal disputes. I don’t want the courts any more involved in the party than they already are.”
Bingham said the state party’s actions raise serious questions about the integrity of future appointments in the state, a topic that has already drawn lawsuits in the past. She said if the Wyoming GOP believes the state law is unconstitutional, they should get the state Legislature to change it rather than choose to ignore it.
“Until they do so, they have a duty to follow the law like every other citizen of this state,” she said.
Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.
