The budget, from this budget session, turned out to be anticlimactic.
On a $9.9 billion dollar budget, the legislature came it $56.9 million dollars less than the Governor’s recommendations or about a 6/10th of a percent reduction from recommended budget.
The real news this session was the high-dollar influencers who didn’t just visit Wyoming during the last legislative session.
They unpacked their luggage, rented a luxury SUV, and started rearranging the furniture.
In January, I wrote that 2024 was the year Wyoming sold its soul.
I wasn’t being poetic. I was being polite.
An outfit called Make Liberty Win, largely funded by Young Americans for Liberty, poured more than $400,000 into Wyoming elections.
Not into roads. Not into schools. Into campaigns. The beneficiaries were largely Freedom Caucus candidates.
Then, the Freedom Caucus pooled resources. They ran smear mailers.
They used scientific focus groups and targeted advertising engineered by a Las Vegas political firm because when you think “Wyoming values,” you naturally think “Las Vegas consultants.
The result? Freedom Caucus control of the Wyoming House.
Then came the awkward moment.
Sen. Ed Cooper suggested that the Freedom Caucus network had committed $30,000 per candidate. Later, he walked it back.
In that column, I noted a few inconvenient facts:
Secret text messages exist.
Some originate from out-of-state political organizations.
Scripts exist.
Those are secret too.
We do not know who is scripting the debate.
The unanswered question isn’t whether there’s coordination. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, we don’t need a legislative interim committee to tell us it might be a duck.
The real question is simpler.
What’s the price of admission?
Then came Checkgate.
Rebecca Bextel delivered checks from wealthy man from Teton County to legislators residing all over Wyoming — none from his legislative district -- on the floor of the house. The people’s House briefly resembled a sweepstakes drawing.
Outrage followed. Criminal investigations began. Legislators accused each other of misconduct.
And House leadership decided the real problem was that someone told the press.
Apparently, informing the public about checks being handed out on the floor of the people’s House was the true offense.
That position isn’t merely weak-kneed. It’s astonishing.
The people’s House belongs to the people. Any scheme, formal or informal, to hide what happens on that floor is offensive. Sunlight is not a violation of decorum.
Here’s what leadership misses about CheckGate. It is not about bribery. It is not about contributions.
Wyoming voters are disgusted.
They are tired of fat cats and political influencers trying to remodel the Wyoming Legislature into something that looks more like a franchise location of a national political brand.
They are sick of slick influencers dictating Wyoming policy.
They are disgusted by the brazen slap in the face of money passed out on the House floor — unethical, unprofessional or merely tone-deaf.
Taking donations on the floor is arrogant.
Testifying you don’t remember taking them is insulting.
Failing to understand why voters are offended demonstrates an indifference so profound it raises the question: why are you here?
It is not lost on Wyoming voters that 31 House members vote in statistical lockstep on nearly every bill, amendment and motion. However John Bear votes, the body votes.
Text messages with Rebecca Bextel suggest Bear controls the financial spigot.
Correspondence from the State Treasurer suggests Bear cannot be trusted.
And still, we ask:
What is the price of admission?
Who controls our Legislature?
Meanwhile, the 2026 election cycle is already marinating in out-of-state dollars.
Megan Degenfelder sent private invitations to a $2,500-per-plate fundraiser. The location? Colorado.
Because nothing says grassroots Wyoming like a high-dollar dinner across the state line.
Ted Grasso and Rebecca Bextel, both central figures in Checkgate, hosted a closed-door fundraiser in Jackson for Republican gubernatorial candidate Megan Degenfelder.
The press was excluded.
One naturally wonders what was said that could not withstand daylight.
Bextel also hosted an event for Secretary of State Chuck Gray’s congressional campaign.
The press was denied access again.
Secretary of State Chuck Gray has not uttered so much as a syllable about Checkgate. The silence is impressive. It could outlast a granite headstone.
Young Americans for Liberty ran social media ads to draft Bo Biteman to run for Governor.
In an amazing touch of irony, the Austin, Texas based YAL ad states, “They [spineless political insiders] want to surrender our state to radical bureaucrats and out-of-state special interests.”
Why YAL selected Biteman is undisclosed. Why an Austin, Texas organization is invested in Wyoming’s political future is likewise undisclosed.
Biteman appeared on YAL’s website as part of its Hazlitt Coalition, alongside Chuck Gray, Sen. Bob Ide and several House Freedom Caucus members.
Perhaps that allegiance explains the interest.
Perhaps not.
But the larger question lingers like cigar smoke in a closed room:
Why are high-dollar, out-of-state interests so determined to shape Wyoming’s government?
What do they expect in return?
Wyoming voters are not naïve. We understand politics requires money.
But when the money flows from out of state, when scripts are secret, when fundraisers exclude the press, when checks are handed out on the House floor, people begin to suspect the Legislature is being managed from somewhere other than Wyoming.
The question isn’t partisan.
The question is sovereignty.
How can the people of Wyoming know their elected officials are loyal to Wyoming rather than to the well-heeled benefactors holding the purse strings?
Because if we cannot answer that question plainly, without hedging or ducking, then 2024 may not have been the year Wyoming sold its soul.
This legislative session may simply have been the down payment.
Tom Lubnau served in the Wyoming Legislature from 2004 to 2015 and is a former Speaker of the House. He can be reached at: YourInputAppreciated@gmail.com
