The Weston County Commission declined Tuesday to appoint one of the local Republican Party’s nominees as its next county clerk.
That’s after the clerk of seven years, Becky Hadlock, resigned last month when a special prosecutor filed felony-level election charges against her.
She told commissioners in a resignation letter that she wanted to focus on the criminal case, and that it was becoming a distraction for the people of Weston County.
Wyoming law says that the political party group matching the outgoing official’s party affiliation gets to nominate three candidates to replace her, and the county commission “shall” appoint one of the three.
A later statute in that same section says that if county commissioners fail to fill the vacancy, a county resident qualified to hold the office can petition the local district court to fill the vacancy.
And the judge “shall” pick one county resident qualified to hold the office, matching the incumbent’s political party, to replace her.
In what some call a quirk of the law, the party doesn’t have to nominate Republicans in this instance, while a judge filling the office would have to appoint a Republican.
Three Weston County commissioners who spoke with Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday said they didn’t cast aye votes for the Weston County GOP’s three candidates because they want someone they see as more qualified: Weston County Deputy Clerk Amber Green.
Pressure On This Year’s Election
Green has been acting clerk since Hadlock’s resignation.
She’s served with the office for seven years and helped run two election cycles, comprising four elections.
“There’s an unbelievable amount of stuff that’s happened in Weston County in the last year,” said Commission Chair Nathan Todd.
Hadlock, a Republican, had taken responsibility in 2024 for errors in that year’s general election that skewed two unopposed races. She had submitted a faulty post-election audit.
Secretary of State Chuck Gray has said repeatedly at public meetings that the audit indicates Hadlock either didn’t perform the required checks or lied about the results.
She’s now facing felony election violation charges over the widely-publicized incident.
That puts pressure on the county to execute the election well this year, said Todd.
Green applied and interviewed, but the Weston County GOP did not choose her as one of its three nominees. The party leadership group chose instead Stanley Jasinsky, Patricia Baumann and Michael Tooman.
Experience Talks
Green has the most elections experience of the four, Todd said.
Weston County Commission Vice Chair Ed Wagoner agreed, telling Cowboy State Daily that he believes Green is the most qualified candidate.
“I voted the way I did because the (Weston County) Central Committee didn’t bring the most qualified person forward,” said Wagoner.
Todd and Wagoner both said they’re grateful the three nominees volunteered to serve, however.
Commissioner Garrett Borton echoed that.
“This is a busy year. We’ve got an election year going on — a huge duty of the clerk is to head off the election,” said Borton. “Amber Green … has already been in that department for some time and she’s gone through election processes, and she knows how to run it.”
Yet three people who haven’t been running elections from inside the clerk’s office advanced.
“Not disparaging any of the three, because I’m thankful they chose to step up in the county’s time of need,” said Borton.
He characterized the three nominees as fine people, but said that doesn't always equate to a good hire for a certain task.
“But what I was not impressed with was how the operations of the Republican party went in choosing these three names.”
He said two of the candidates, Jasinsky and Baumann, said during their Tuesday interviews that they were going to tackle the huge task of running an election by leaning on clerk’s office staffers.
That left Borton wondering why the county shouldn’t just hire its existing staff member, he said.
Borton also related that Tooman said he didn’t want the position, but viewed his bid as a public service since the seat needed to be filled.
Tooman and Baumann could not be reached by publication. Jasinsky did not reply by publication to a Wednesday-afternoon voicemail.
And Why
Weston County GOP Chair Kari Drost said that, speaking as just one voter in the Saturday meeting, she felt Green was short on answers.
One of the questions posed to Green was what she’d do differently in an election so that the 2024 general election problems would not recur, Drost said.
“Her answer was, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’” said Drost. “She had no suggestions on what could be better and when asked again that same question, her answer was the same.”
Green countered in a separate interview, saying this was a misunderstanding.
She understood the question to be asking her personally what she’d do differently in 2026 from her performance in 2024, yet she hadn’t driven the problems of 2024, so she wouldn’t change her performance.
She also said it would be inappropriate for her to speak at length about the workings of the 2024 election since those are now part of a criminal case for which she’s being subpoenaed as a witness.
“And they knew that. I told them that multiple times,” said Green. “I don’t think that’s fair, with criminal charges out there right now, to answer that question.”
Green said she wishes she’d asked for clarification Saturday.
The second strike against Green in Drost’s view, the latter said, was that Green had sent a letter to the Weston County GOP which didn’t align with a statute it cited.
It was a letter notifying county party leaders of the need for election judges.
Green told Cowboy State Daily that in the past, she hasn’t needed election judges, but opened the election up to judges this year and sent out a letter containing boilerplate language from a prior year.
It’s probably a “fair” critique by Drost, said Green, who had apologized during the Saturday meeting for not having read the statute. She said she was juggling “100 things” at that time with Hadlock’s rapid departure and the coming election.
Green told Cowboy State Daily she plans to run for the position of county clerk in this year’s election.
“I feel pretty passionate about it,” she said. “I’ve put a lot of hard work into this office.”
How It Went
Drost said she wasn’t alone in her refusal to nominate Green.
Tooman secured 20 votes, Jasinsky 14 and Baumann 14 votes on Saturday, while Green got 10, said Drost.
“Clearly, I was not the only person in the committee that had a problem with Amber,” said Drost.
In the account of another attendee at Saturday’s meeting, precinct committeeman Curtis Rankin, Jasinsky’s application was a curveball.
“They had three candidates that had signed up when they were supposed to,” said Rankin. “There was a motion made to open the nominations up to the floor.”
Rankin said Wyoming Freedom Caucus-aligned people run the Weston County GOP, and “there wasn’t much we could do.”
“Actually, they kind of pulled the wool over my eyes, because I didn’t realize what was going on,” said Rankin. “I think it’s pretty sad day when commonsense takes a backseat to a political agenda.”
But the three nominees gained almost no traction with commissioners Tuesday, according to Todd’s account of the Weston County Commission’s meeting.
After each candidate gave an interview outside the hearing of the others, Todd made a motion to appoint Jasinsky, he said.
That motion died for lack of a second.
Then Todd moved to appoint Baumann. Someone seconded that motion.
Commissioner Vera Huber, who did not immediately respond to an email request for comment, voted in favor of Baumann’s appointment. The other four commissioners voted nay.
Then Todd called for Tooman’s appointment. That motion died for lack of a second.
Three Years Ago
The Sheridan County Commission in 2023 failed to appoint one of its local GOP’s nominees to fill a board seat of its own.
The Sheridan County GOP derided the move.
Judge Darci Phillips could have chosen from any qualified Republican in the county, but she announced that she would choose the appointee from among the three nominees the GOP had presented.
The judge ultimately appointed Sheridan resident Holly Jennings to the position.
Later, the county party sued over how the commission handled the incident.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
