WyoRINO, an anonymous website that says it was created “to expose liberal Wyoming Republicans who violate our Wyoming Republican values,” has ranked how well Republican state lawmakers vote in line with the Wyoming Republican Party platform.
The group bases its rankings on 10 of the several hundred votes that surfaced in this year’s legislative session.
That figure is less than 9% of the 114 bills the Wyoming Legislature passed into law this year, ranging from topics of local interest to national flashpoints.
Those bills rose from a pool of 335 bills filed in this year’s February-March lawmaking session. And Legislative staff numbered 837 amendments during that same session, hundreds of which surfaced for votes. Each chamber passed 37 amendments to the budget as well.
“The time is long overdue to hold politicians accountable for big government, big regulation, big taxation laws,” says the group’s website, calling those “values that the Republican party does NOT support.”
The 10 “key votes” by which the group ranks lawmakers bear “easily identifiable traits in relation to Republican values,” says its website.
They do not feature numerous bills that also address the Wyoming Republican Party platforms tenets, such as:
• The Human Heartbeat Act, which is a near-total ban on abortion that’s now law.
• A failed attempt to change the Wyoming Constitution to let the Legislature restrict abortion.
• A bill to extend the lifespan of Wyoming’s property tax exemptions for long-term homeowners.
• A bill to safeguard people’s free speech by barring retaliatory lawsuits.
• A bill to protect felons who have had their gun rights restored in other states from being prosecuted anew for owning guns.
WyoRINO did not respond by publication to a request for comment submitted via its contact form.
“RINO” is an acronym for Republican In Name Only. The term has gained traction in Wyoming because in a large majority of the state’s legislative districts, candidates registered Republican are likelier to win elections than registered Democrats.
The 40%
The group ranked Rep. Martha Lawley, R-Worland, as 40% Republican this year.
“I will say, it doesn’t really matter to me who’s doing the scorecard. They all to a certain degree — some to greater degrees — are agenda-driven,” said Lawley, later adding that the ranking sites are “outcome-driven” with the apparent goal to influence elections.
She holds that suspicion toward sites that rank her favorably also, saying, “I don’t have a great fear of them.”
Lawley represents constituents in Big Horn and Washakie counties.
She sponsored a bill this year that, had it survived the Senate, would have given women a mechanism to sue people who coerce them into having an elective abortion.
On the fiscal side, Lawley defended the University of Wyoming and Wyoming Public Television from budget cuts and denials, respectively, during marathon budget debates in the House.
WyoRINO assigned her a demerit for her aye vote on a failed House amendment that would have rolled back hundreds of millions of dollars in budget cuts and denials the Joint Appropriations Committee had proposed, and would instead have launched the House’s budget planning from Gov. Mark Gordon’s recommended starting point of $10.13 billion.
That figure has been adjusted down from Gordon’s figure since lawmakers spun some budget provisions into standalone bills.
WyoRINO calls Lawley’s and others’ aye votes to restore the governor’s recommendations an abdication of legislative authority, and says it violates planks 14 and 17 of the state GOP platform.
Plank 14 emphasizes the states’ sovereignty, the immutability the Constitution should retain unless changed by its own amendment process, and the need for a government close to the people.
Plank 17 calls for fiscal responsibility and keeping taxes within what’s necessary for government to meet its constitutional obligations.
To Lawley, her vote wasn’t about abdicating authority. It was about finding a sensible starting place for budget edits, she said.
“Throughout the session I voiced a lot of concerns relating to issues my constituents cared about, that the Joint Appropriations Committee (JAC) did not sufficiently provide us information on,” she said.
She’d voiced similar transparency concerns during the session.
Another lawmaker, Rep. Rob Geringer, R-Cheyenne, had agreed with her, saying the JAC took frequent pauses for non-public discussions during its budget deliberations.
Lawley reacted to WyoRINO’s assessment with irony, and said that in the end, even the House’s top budget hawks agreed to adopt many of the governor’s recommendations into law.
“Ultimately, House leadership, no matter the position they took on the floor, went over and completely gave into (the Senate’s positions matching Gordon’s),” said Lawley.
Well, not completely.
Though the House acceded the Senate’s position on a number of key topics, the final budget fell $143 million under the $10.13 billion draft Gordon had recommended after the House’s version had landed at $170 under.
Lawley championed numerous GOP platform darlings in 2025, including: a successful bill tightening medical restrictions on abortion clinics (plank 1), a proposed increase in restrictions on transgender cross-sex participation in school sports, and a successful bill to protect women’s-only public spaces from transgender entrance (plank 7).
That’s Negotiation
House Appropriations Chairman John Bear, R-Gillette, touted WyoRINO’s 100% Republican ranking of him in a Tuesday Facebook post.
“I have maintained a 100% Republican platform voting record since I was first elected in 2020,” wrote Bear. “Why? Because I agree with the platform which was created by the grassroots Republicans of Wyoming.
"If you don’t agree with the platform by 80% or more, should you call yourself Republican?”
In the end, Bear approved a budget reflecting many of the governor’s recommendations, though he didn’t vote for the amendment WyoRINO found problematic.
That was negotiation, he told Cowboy State Daily.
“That’s not the same as just flat-out voting for an amendment based on best practice,” said Bear, adding that on the House floor he had, like WyoRINO, argued that reverting to Gordon’s recommendation abdicated legislative authority.
The maneuver failed in the House, though it passed in the Senate.
To Bear, giving the governor some wins reflected his calculations after seeing what he called a lack of support for cuts in the Senate.
He conceded that WyoRINO pulled a small, arguably subjective sampling of votes for its ranking, but said its outcomes still tend to align with more exhaustive, more “objective” analyses on other sites, like Evidencebasedwyoming.com.
The 50%
WyoRINO scored Rep. Art. Washut, R-Casper, at 50% Republican this year.
Like it did for Lawley, the group dinged Washut for voting to adopt the governor’s recommended budget as a starting point.
Washut said he did so because the Senate had done the same, and he thought the shared starting point would help in budget negotiations.
“You know, those (scorecards) are driven by an agenda of the group that takes them,” said Washut. “I don’t know that those rankings are particularly helpful if folks only look at the final score, as opposed to exploring a little deeper and looking at the individual votes, and how significant they were.”
A bill can have a different form on final passage than it had on introduction. It can have a good intent but incoherent methods, Lawley said.
Washut this year successfully championed a pro-Second Amendment bill protecting felons who have had their gun rights restored in other states from being prosecuted for having guns. It was a buildout of Wyoming’s preexisting gun rights restoration system.
WyoRINO dinged him for voting against a property tax cut.
“My sense on a lot of that property tax (legislation) is we’ve already done a bunch — and the counties and special districts are still trying to calculate the overall impact of all the different property taxes we’ve done up till this session,” said Washut.
Washut in 2024 voted in favor of a property tax cut for longterm homeowners and a 4% cap on rate growth for property taxes. He voted against a 25% cut in 2025.
Wyoming voters are scheduled to vote at this year’s general election on a proposed 50% residential property tax cut.
Washut urged deeper evaluation, over more time, before passing more laws.
“How big of an impact has that 4% cap had for example?” asked Washut. “You don’t know that until you see how much the property value changes are.”
Kelly’s Ache
WyoRINO gave Rep. Tom Kelly, R-Sheridan, a 100% Republican rating.
Kelly left the session in its first week due to what he’s described as a severe back injury requiring surgery. The site ranked him favorably on two votes and acknowledged he was excused on the other eight.
“I’d say you’d have to take (my score) with a grain of salt. I missed most of the session,” said Kelly.
But the group keeping excused votes out of the equation shows it’s “being consistent with their methodology,” he added.
On the 10 “key” votes, Kelly aligned with Bear.
“Obviously, picking 10 votes out of hundreds isn’t exactly a scientific method, like Evidence-based Wyoming (uses),” said Kelly. “I kind of look at WyoRINO — it’s like taking somebody’s temperature at the doctor’s office.
"It might tell you there’s an issue, but you’re not going to be able to pinpoint what the cause is.”
Rep. Tony Locke, R-Casper, opined similarly, announcing WyoRINO’s results via Facebook and saying, “if you want more conservative policies, then vote in conservatives that follow the Republican platform!”
Like Bear and Kelly, Locke also pointed to the more thorough Evidencebasedwyoming.com. He added that WyoRINO’s rough breakdown aligns with his anecdotal experience in the Legislature.
The Ten
On the Senate side, WyoRINO awarded GOP orthodoxy findings via these 10 “key” votes:
• Voting no on the Senate’s successful vote to restore the governor’s recommended budget.
• Voting no on the Senate’s bid to allocate nearly half a million dollars to preserve petroglyphs on certain state lands.
• Voting no on a $1.5 million allocation “over and above the governor’s requested budget” to help local governments set up digital permit systems.
• Voting yes to repealing the Wyoming Business Council, which is a state agency that gives grants and loans to businesses and communities. The agency narrowly survived the session, and is slated for scrutiny in the coming months.
• Voting yes “to establish hand counting as the standard for all Wyoming elections, removing electronic tabulation systems and enhancing election transparency.”
• Voting yes on a bill to cut property taxes.
• Voting no on a bill to establish a trade commission with Ireland.
• Voting against calling a U.S. convention of states.
• Voting to revive a failed bill that would have helped challengers purge sexually explicit books from libraries’ children’s sections.
• Voting to add recordkeeping requirements to post-election audit procedures.
On the House side, the group awarded state Republican Party orthodoxy findings for:
• Voting against restoring the governor’s budget recommendation.
• Voting against a $5 million amendment to fund maternity and delivery care, with potential reimbursement from a health care package Congress passed via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
• Voting against restoring Wyoming Business Council finding.
• Voting against giving state employees raises.
• Voting for the sexually graphic library books challenge bill.
• Voting to anchor property tax assessments, generally, to a home’s value when acquired.
• Voting in favor of the hand count elections bill.
• Voting to require all public schools to show a video showing the stages of human development from conception until birth.
• Voting against forming the Wyoming-Ireland trade commission.
• Voting against the U.S. convention of states.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
