U.S. House candidate Chuck Gray’s recent campaign poll contained subjective attacks, images of the poll questions provided to Cowboy State Daily, coupled with an interview, show.
Cowboy State Daily reported early Monday that Gray sent a poll by high-profile pollster Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, which worked with President Donald Trump’s campaigns.
The poll showed Gray leading at 21% support, with nine other candidates trailing at 14% and less. There also were 33% who registered as “strong undecided."
The poll also contained a push phase, where recipients received “information” about Gray and two of his opponents, Casper-businessman Reid Rasner and Teton County philanthropist Steve Friess, according to a methodology breakdown included in the poll memo Gray sent Cowboy State Daily.
After the “information” dump, Gray’s percentage points doubled, while Rasner’s and Friess’s sunk.
The “information” comprised bizarre and subjective campaign attacks, a survey recipient told Cowboy State Daily soon after the first story published.
Former state Rep. Ember Oakley, a Republican and former legislator who now lives in Kemmerer, was one of those who took the poll. She sent Cowboy State Daily screenshots she said she took while answering the May 13 survey.
'His Family's Wealth'
“Steve Friess is a Jackson Hole elitist who has never held a real job and has lived his entire life off his family’s wealth,” one screenshot says. “The same out-of-touch privilege that leaves him completely disconnected from the struggles of working families in Wyoming.”
Friess told Cowboy State Daily prior that he’s worked in finance.
He has been active as a philanthropist, and helped form executive order drafts to offer to Trump upon the president’s first inauguration in 2017.
Friess and his wife also founded a Christian school, Jackson Hole Classical Academy, in 2014.
Oakley said she found the push poll’s information laughable.
“That was straight irony,” she said. “Chuck Gray, as far as I know, and I’ve asked, hasn’t had a career or a real, legitimate job before he got into Wyoming politics."
Gray, who is 36, told Cowboy State Daily prior that he worked in his father’s radio business. He has been in Wyoming politics since at least 2017, when he joined the Wyoming House of Representatives.
“His campaign money and everything, his finances, have been from (his) daddy’s wealth,” said Oakley. “To write that Friess is out of touch because he’s lived off his family’s wealth and hasn’t had a real job is, like, describing Chuck.”
Oakley then laughed.
Friess’s campaign manager declined to comment Monday.
Rasner
The “information” the poll reportedly dispatched about Rasner contained more objective information, but at least one subjective theory and some loaded framing.
“Reid Rasner married his gay husband in New York, hyphenated his name like a Hollywood celebrity, then divorced him in Wyoming and hit him with a strict gag order — banning his ex-husband from using his name mentioning his job, or even referring to details of their marriage on podcasts or social media,” says one of the screenshots.
While many of those facts are correct, nothing in the court documents that underpin them accuses Rasner of behaving “like a Hollywood celebrity.”
Rasner had married a man in New York, New York in 2012, and the pair divorced in 2020, Wyoming court documents show.
One of the tenets of the divorce decree is for the pair not to make derogatory comments about one another. After the ex-husband took to his podcast and the Internet to talk about Rasner, the judge ordered the other man to show cause, then issued a stipulated order in 2022 containing numerous specific bans.
“Defendant shall never insinuate any facts about plaintiff that would negatively impact his type of employment as a financial planner” or say other, certain salacious things about him, the judge ordered.
Rasner’s campaign spokesman did not respond by publication to a text message request for comment.
‘Propaganda’
Gray told Cowboy State Daily on Monday that the “information” in the poll included “different points on our records.”
Later when confronted with the screenshots, Gray didn’t outright confirm the content, but he said that the initial ballot test — from which he scored 21% support from the 400-person hypothetical election the poll posits — was given “before any prompts.”
“The initial ballot test is the key,” he said. “This is the standard in all polling.”
Oakley called it propaganda.
“I think the technical term is called push polling,” she said. “It’s just done for propaganda and for campaign reasons.”
In the prompts, said Oakley, “they clearly were just writing things that were inflammatory.”
Too Early Anyway
Rob Wallace, a longtime Wyoming politico, cast skepticism on a poll conducted so early in the race even before the screenshots with the bizarre prompts surfaced.
Wallace served as assistant secretary to the U.S. Department of the Interior during the first Trump administration and years prior worked multiple political campaigns as an advisor for the late U.S. Sen. Malcolm Wallop.
He also ran for Congress in 1994 and finished second in a crowded primary to Rep. Barbara Cubin.
“Polling this early in the campaign is like endorsements,” he said. “It’s good to have favorable information, but the real part of the race isn’t going to get going until probably after the Fourth of July.”
The filing period for candidates ended Friday, and the primary election is Aug. 18.
Wallace also hesitated to attach significance to the poll since the “information" the Fabrizio team gave voters was unknown.
“Without really understanding all the pieces of the poll, it’s hard to give a complete assessment of what it means,” he said.
Now that the filing period has ended, the other nine candidates in the Republican U.S. House primary race are going to burst into public view as much as they can, Wallace said.
Between the poll and the filing deadline, two more candidates registered: Keith Goodenough and Richard Dodson.
That puts the primary race at 10 contenders.
Whoever wins that race will have to face the Democratic candidate, plus the Libertarian nominee Shawn Johnson, who gained momentum when his party selected him unanimously at its Sunday convention.
“There are a couple reasons for putting a favorable poll out” at this phase, said Wallace. One reason could be to dissuade others from running; and another could be to reassure one’s base and supporters.
“It’s like a good-news story for the people you want to attract,” he added.
Hey, Trump
The big unknown, said Wallace, is what Trump will do.
The president has endorsed Megan Degenfelder for governor over her GOP opponents.
He has not endorsed anyone in the crowded U.S. House primary race.
Friess, Rasner, Gray, Balow, and Biteman all have dispatched messaging indicating alignment with Trump.
Rasner and Gray tout themselves as MAGA-style candidates.
Biteman has for years had a collaborative relationship with the president, he’s told Cowboy State Daily prior.
Christensen is a strong outlier there: he condemned the president’s April social media post of an AI-generated image depicting Trump as a Jesus-like figure, healing an ailing man while others circle him in gestures of prayer.
A Trump endorsement, said Wallace, “could be a game-changer if he decides to do it. And maybe he won’t — maybe he won’t endorse anybody.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
