Mass campaign mailers have emerged in Wyoming’s hotly-contested race for the Republican nomination for U.S. House of Representatives, and they talk a lot about President Donald Trump.
That’s not shocking. Wyoming voters yielded a higher percentage of Trump votes than any other state for three elections in a row, ending at about 72% in his favor in 2024.
Of the 10 contenders for the GOP nomination, at least three have dispatched mass mailers: Secretary of State Chuck Gray, conservative philanthropist and thought leader Steve Friess, and Casper businessman Reid Rasner.
Casper-based Army veteran Kevin Christensen told Cowboy State Daily he’s put out mailers, but in localized batches and not as a statewide effort.
Christensen’s mailer, uniquely, doesn’t mention Trump.
The PAC’s Dispatch
The Wyoming Values PAC sent a mailer in recent days on behalf of Gray, depicting the secretary to the right of President Donald Trump, as the latter points in Gray’s direction.
The other side of the mailer shows Gray, arms crossed, superimposed on the image of Trump, as Trump raises a fist in the air.
The word “Trump” appears five times on the mailer.
“America first patriot Chuck Gray stands with President Trump to protect our Wyoming way of life,” says the mailer’s text.
It asserts that Gray fought to keep Trump on the ballot, as Gray championed an effort to make Wyoming the first in the nation for proof-of-citizenship voting.
The Republican National Committee inadvertently countered that claim last year in a court filing saying Arizona passed proof-of-citizenship voting requirements before Wyoming did.
Gray countered this in a Tuesday statement, saying Arizona’s requirement wasn’t ironclad because that state is not National Voter Rights Act exempt as Wyoming is.
The Wyoming Values PAC flier claims Gray will work with Trump to secure the border and deport illegal aliens; that he’ll work to protect and expand the coal industry; that he’ll “never let Chinese foreign interests come into Wyoming and buy our land” and that he’ll fight to stop “woke wind projects” and subsidies for them.
Media, Media, Media
Gray in an email response to a series of questions, pointed to Wyomingites’ high rates of support for Trump, and leveled insults at the media.
Wyoming supports Trump because he “defends our values and our way of life, while standing up to the lies of the out of control radical leftwing media,” said Gray.
“I also have made it my mission to defend and advance the silent majority here in Wyoming, and fight the lying insiders, the radical Left, and the out of control media,” he continued. “That's why lying insiders like Rasner and the media hate me so much — they hate me because I've successfully advanced America First conservative policy.”
Gray said the mailers show that he’s worked, rather than just talked, to advance “the America First Agenda.”
He reiterated the mailer’s statements about him and said that he banned ranked-choice voting and “Zuckbucks,” and in 2023 “crafted a strategy to ban crossover voting” to curb Democrat infiltration of the Republican primary election.
The MAGA Hat
Casper businessman Rasner’s mailer uses the word “Trump” three times, calling Rasner a “Trump conservative” who believes “Our Second Amendment is Sacred,” “Border Security is National Security,” and “Liberal Politicians Spend Too Much Money.”
Rasner appears on both sides of the mailer in a “Make America Great Again” hat.
Another Rasner mailer shows him in a brown Carhartt-style coat, gripping a rifle — and promises that Rasner will work to keep public lands “in public hands.”
That one takes a dig at Gray, saying the secretary “sold us out” by changing his stance on both a controversial gravel pit and whether Wyoming should welcome wind projects.
Gray had voted to approve state leases for both a Natrona County gravel pit and various wind farm projects before becoming one of the state’s most vocal opponents of both that gravel pit and “woke wind” in general.
Trump … Reagan
Friess, son of the conservative megadonor and 2018 gubernatorial candidate Foster Friess, dispatched two recent mailers touting the approaches of both Trump and the late President Ronald Reagan.
“Like Reagan … Like Trump,” says the mailer, showing Friess grinning in front of the Tetons with photos of both Reagan and Trump smiling superimposed over the view.
That one invokes Trump’s name twice.
It calls Friess a “lifelong advocate for freedom, limited government, and traditional values.” It references the late Foster Friess, and says Steve Fries grew up “inspired to action by the leadership of Ronald Reagan.”
“Steve Friess is not a career politician,” the mailer says, “He’s a businessman and conservative outsider who has spent decades in the trenches supporting groups like Tea Party Patriots, True the vote and Turning Point USA in the fight against the radical left.”
The other Friess mailer uses Trump’s name three times. It shows what appears to be an actual photograph of Friess standing on Trump’s right, while Friess’s mother Lynn stands to the president’s left; all three grinning.
It points to Friess’s philanthropy and conservative thinktank efforts which, Friess said in a past interview, helped to cultivate executive orders geared toward being ready options for Trump as soon as his first term began.
Friess's campaign manager, who said he was driving Tuesday afternoon, did not furnish a comment by publication.
Fiscally Conservative
Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, isn’t springing for mailers at this juncture.
“Out of respect for the voters you will not see an abundance of overpriced mailers with flashy imagery and canned talking points that go straight into the garbage from Senator Biteman’s campaign,” Biteman’s campaign associate Joey Correnti told Cowboy State Daily in a Tuesday email. “He is not running a cookie-cutter D.C. political-consultant-driven race.”
Correnti said Biteman is running a fiscally conservative campaign that has “a great deal of respect for the people who have dug deep into their already tight household budgets and donated to support the campaign, and Senator Biteman refuses to let those sacrifices by the people go directly to the landfill.”
The Biteman campaign may send a few targeted mailers in the future as needed, Correnti added, “but for the time being Senator Biteman‘s long-standing posture of being a responsible custodian of the fiscal contributions of the people stands.”
Former State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow, another GOP contender, told Cowboy State Daily she’s not dispatched mailers yet, but she’s visited a lot of houses while going door to door.
She said one afternoon last weekend she knocked on the door of a former student, a teacher she’d worked with 25 years ago, and “I met so many great people.”
“When you are on someone’s doorstep, there is a deep respect for their home, neighborhood and community,” said Balow in a Tuesday text message. “It’s truly the best place to learn about what’s on the minds of voters.”
The press team for David Giralt, a military veteran from Casper, said the team expects to communicate with voters on Girald's experience, background and policy positions, but it's early in the campaign, and the filing deadline hasn't passed, so the team is "focused on the fundamentals as the field continues to take shape."
Not Trumpy
It’s not a mass mailer, but Christensen said he’s been sending his campaign mailer in batches about a week before he visits an area.
The mailer shows Christensen in front of an aircraft and touts him as a third-generation Wyomingite, combat veteran and University of Wyoming graduate.
The other side has a list of values, goals and credentials, such as a goal to increase public lands access, an emphasis on the Second Amendment and the notion that “Congress needs to earn back the trust and respect of the American people.”
He told Cowboy State Daily in a Tuesday email that he prefers door hangers to mailers, and has good conversations while going door-to-door.
The mailers aren't Trumpy, because, “I am seeking the endorsement of the people of Wyoming, not President Trump,” he said.
Christensen made the news last month by being the first candidate in that race openly to condemn Trump’s posting of an illustration that depicting Trump as Jesus or a godlike healing figure in Roman-style robes.
“I have had a lot of positive feedback from people I have met around the state, including most of the Republicans I have met, for not making Trump the central figure in my campaign,” he said. “The people of Wyoming are the central figure!”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
