Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon has received five clusters of formal requests to remove county officers from their positions.
That’s unprecedented.
Three of Gordon’s most recent predecessors — Govs. Mike Sullivan, Jim Geringer and Dave Freudenthal — can’t recall having received any complaints to remove county officials during their terms.
Republican Gov. Matt Mead, who served just before Gordon from 2011 to 2019, declined to comment.
His late-term chief of staff Mary Kay Hill, who also worked for him throughout his eight-year tenure, said she couldn’t recall any removal complaints filed with his office.
Mead’s attorney general Peter Michael could not be reached to confirm.
Gordon is 1-1 on advancing complaints to official removal proceedings.
When Crook County commissioners in 2021 asked him to remove their treasurer for misconduct, Gordon agreed. He referred the complaint to his attorney general for removal proceedings.
When Weston County residents filed Dec. 19, 2024, complaints for removal of their clerk over election irregularities, Gordon said her actions didn’t rise to the level of malfeasance.
He declined to pursue removal of Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock.
The other three actions filed with his office are still pending.
Those are:
• A complaint to remove two of the three Hot Springs County commissioners;
• A refreshed complaint against Hadlock that now includes claims she filed a false post-election audit;
• And a complaint to remove the entire, three-man Platte County Commission.
The Governors Say …
Wyoming politicos who spoke with Cowboy State Daily on Friday offered different, contrasting theories for why Gordon is seeing a rash of removal complaints, when the maneuver was rare in years past.
The past governors cited rising political strife.
“I just think the state’s kind of, generally in a period of unrest,” Freudenthal, a Democratic governor who served from 2003 to 2011, told Cowboy State Daily. “You can sense it.”
But, said Freudenthal, he hasn’t explored the origins of that.
Geringer, a Republican, served from 1995 to 2003.
He said social media may be a factor.
“People get together on certain platforms and say, ‘Let’s just see how far we can go with this,’” he ventured. “That’s a plausible argument.”
On the one hand, he said, people may be “playing politics” with some of their claims. But on the other hand – here he cited the case of election irregularities Weston County residents cited in a complaint about their county clerk – people may have more legitimate concerns.
Geringer said he hopes people will confront their local officials about each issue before filing a complaint with the governor. Being “neighborly” and maintaining local governmental control are cherished concepts in Wyoming, he said.
Sullivan, a Democrat who served from 1987 to 1995, said the political arena in 2025 is more contentious, “and people are a little more willing to pick fights than they used to be.”
Another factor, Sullivan theorized, could be the massive amounts of information now available to people. Digesting all that information quickly could lead people to “pull out something that (indicates) somebody’s doing wrong.”
Party Leaders Counter
Weston County GOP Chair Kari Drost spearheaded that first complaint against Hadlock. She did it because her county party’s leadership, or central committee, voted for that option to hold the local clerk accountable, Drost told Cowboy State Daily in a Friday phone interview.
Drost said she had also presented the local GOP leaders with other options, like censuring Hadlock.
Around that time Secretary of State Chuck Gray filed other, additional allegations against Hadlock.
But those were not valid under the governor’s investigation law since Gray is not an elector of Weston County, Gordon’s office noted in September.
In response, Drost and others filed a second complaint against Hadlock in October, this time including the allegations Gray had raised.
“So, I can’t speak to anyone else, or why anyone else would submit complaints,” Drost told Cowboy State Daily in a Friday phone interview.
But as for Weston County, “the people tried to hold our clerk accountable for her poor performance in her job, and according to statute, the only recourse that we had was to ask the governor to remove her,” said Drost.
Wyoming doesn’t have recall elections for county officials.
Though the effort Drost spearheaded resulted from a party decision, it boiled down to citizens choosing to act, she said.
“We don’t have a duty as a party. We have a duty as citizens,” she said. “So, regardless of which party you belong to, all citizens should hold their elected officials accountable.”
Nudging That Legislature
Karl Allred, who served a brief stint as Wyoming Secretary of State in late 2022 and attended a recent Wyoming GOP meeting as an outspoken proxy, said he doesn’t believe there’s a coordinated effort to bombard the governor.
Many people are simply exasperated with their local governance and are seeking better representation from them, he said.
“I think people are really getting to the point that they expect elected officials to be held to a higher standard than somebody just doing a job,” said Allred. “And when they’re not, I think people are understandably upset.”
Though Allred discounted the idea of a coordinated effort, he acknowledged the recent flurry of complaints could nudge the legislature toward enacting recall election laws.
“I think the legislature may take a closer look at it this time,” said Allred. “And I agree with some people: (removal) should not be easy. The bar should be high.”
Wyoming GOP Chair Bryan Miller and Vice-Chair Bob Ferguson did not return requests for comment by publication.
The One Gordon Sent To Court
Crook County commissioners on July 26, 2021, filed an official complaint to remove County Treasurer Mary Kuhl. Rather than go through removal proceedings, Kuhl resigned.
She was charged with a felony and three misdemeanors three days before the commissioners filed their removal complaint – on claims that she tweaked vehicle registration figures and issued false vehicle registrations.
She was sentenced to probation in 2022, the Sundance Times and other outlets reported.
The One He Wouldn’t
Though Gordon declined to pursue removal actions against Hadlock, he’s now considering the Weston County residents’ sequel complaints about her.
Hadlock is facing criminal prosecution as well, for not appearing for a legislative subpoena in September.
Her attorney is arguing that state lawmakers broke the law and issued the subpoena as a form of criminal investigation, violating the Wyoming Constitution’s separation-of-powers mandate and Hadlock’s rights.
That argument is pending in Casper Circuit Court.
And The Ones He’s Got
Besides the new Weston County complaint, Gordon is also considering the Hot Springs and Platte County complaints.
The Hot Springs County complaint accuses two county commissioners of defying a judge’s order and advancing their own terms on a controversial land use dispute that has raged in the region for years.
The Platte County complaint is at least partially false, though a claim that commissioners violated the state’s open meeting laws may have merit, according to Charlie Anderson, a Gillette-based attorney experienced in local governance law.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
