It’s campaign flier season, which means Wyoming voters are being inundated with messages about political candidates, which can range from splashy to inaccurate to lawsuit-provoking.
The two biggest-spending out-of-state groups in the state’s 2024 primary election cycle — Make Liberty Win and Americans For Prosperity — are at it again this year.
Make Liberty Win backs Wyoming Freedom Caucus-aligned candidates, while Americans For Prosperity backs a variety of GOP hopefuls, generally on libertarian-leaning or business-friendly credentials.
Lander residents in late June received Make Liberty Win door hangers showing the town’s incumbent Republican legislators, Sen. Cale Case and Rep. Lloyd Larsen, dressed in sheep suits with little hooves raised.
“Don’t let Rep. Lloyd Larsen and Sen. Cale Case in Sheep’s Clothing Fool You On Election Day August 18th!” says the door hanger.
The back of the flier says both voted against banning sexually explicit government funded events, “endangered children by voting against a ban on gender transition surgeries for minors” and “exposed women to their radical transgender agenda by voting against protecting women’s sports.”
Larsen and Case both said this is an inaccurate and clumsy account of their voting records.
Larsen also said he tracked down the “young man” handing out the door hangers to tell him so, the legislator told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday phone interview.
“I kind of started driving around town and found the young man who was passing them out,” said Larsen. “He inquired if I was going to vote, and he commenced to tell me about the evils of me and Senator Case.”
The man had “no idea who he was talking to,” said Larsen.
Larsen visited with the man, but soon held the flier up to his own face, and the young man said, “Oh. This is uncomfortable,” Larsen recalled.
‘He’s Just Trying To Make A Living'
In Larsen’s recollection, the young man had graduated from a Colorado university with a bio-engineering degree and hadn’t been able to find work. He was able to secure work passing out door hangers for Make Liberty Win.
“It was hard to get mad at him, you know?” said Larsen. “He’s just trying to make a living.”
But Larsen said the fliers are frustrating, because they distill a person’s voting record onto a few flashy, sometimes inaccurate talking points on a flier.
For example, in 2024 when Larsen voted against a ban on sex-change treatments for kids, he found it overbroad because it would have stripped medical professionals of their licenses even in more nuanced situations, he said.
Larsen said that under the bill, a medical professional who intervened to help a kid who’d had a sex-change surgery elsewhere, but needed help with surgery complications while passing through Wyoming, could lose his license.
Larsen had sponsored his own bill that same year to ban child sex-change surgeries. His bill didn’t call for specific penalties, but left enforcement to the discretion of the Wyoming Board of Medicine.
Larsen’s bill did not pass, the other bill did.
Women’s Sports
Sen. Wendy Schuler, R-Evanston, sponsored the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act in 2022 to ban cross-sex participation in girls’ interscholastic sports.
Larsen and 36 other House members voted against resurrecting it from then-House Speaker Albert Sommers’ drawer, and it died.
That amounted to a time management concern for Larsen, he said, since it was a busy budget session.
Schuler brought her bill back in 2023 and it passed, with Larsen voting aye.
Different Creature
Case doesn’t fall into lockstep with Larsen and displays contrarian tendencies.
These break with and against the popular Republican movements. For example, in 2010 he was a rare opponent of a tax break for large data centers — putting him far ahead of the current anti-data-center hype within a wing of the Wyoming GOP, he said.
Case generally votes against involving government in social issues and abortion.
He voted against Schuler’s sports bills in both 2022 and 2023.
“I just thought the Wyoming (High School) Activities Association was doing a good job, and we didn’t really need to interfere,” said Case in a Wednesday phone interview, referring to the administrative entity that handled cross-sex participation requests on a case-by-case basis prior to Schuler’s bill.
Gov. Mark Gordon announced in March 2023 that Wyoming had four transgender athletes in its public schools at that time.
“We’re always trying to be the god-on-high,” said Case of the state Legislature. “I sort of like to have local people figure that out.”
Case voted with two other Republican senators and two Democrats against child sex-change ban legislation of both 2023 and 2024. He didn’t get the chance to vote on Larsen’s sex-change bill since it didn’t’ clear introduction in the House.
Issues of sex and identity are incredibly nuanced, said Case, as are patient-doctor interactions.
As for the cartoonish fliers, Case said, “I think the whole thing will help us, not hurt us.”
He added with a laugh, “It’s a good likeness. I looked younger than Lloyd, though we’re the same age.”
‘Spicy Times’
Tyler Lindholm is a rancher, former state representative and now Wyoming director for Americans For Prosperity.
He lives in Sundance.
Americans For Prosperity is ratcheting up its 2026 flier campaign in Wyoming by casting Sen. Ogden Driskill’s campaign opponent, House Speaker Chip Neiman, as anti-energy, which Neiman calls a mischaracterization of his record.
AFP backs Driskill.
The organization is also vastly different from Make Liberty Win, said Lindholm. He said the Wyoming AFP wouldn’t depict candidates in sheep’s clothing and doesn’t need to.
“No, no, no. We don’t even apply filters over folks’ faces or anything like that,” said Lindholm. “Their votes speak for themselves. We don’t need to dress them up as sheep.”
He added: "Spicy times."
AFP is an out-of-state group based in Virginia.
But Lindholm emphasized that it has a known presence in Wyoming, starting with him and extending to other full-time staffers.
Make Liberty Win did not respond by publication to an email request for comment.
‘That Is All B.S.’
While AFP has backed numerous non-Freedom Caucus candidates, it’s not exactly an anti-Freedom Caucus outfit. The group has supported the Freedom Caucus-aligned Rep. Daniel Singh, for example.
But it’s an anti-Chip Neiman outfit.
Lindholm said people can expect more fliers deriding Neiman's voting record.
The Neiman-versus-Driskill Senate race is an allegory of the larger struggle between Freedom Caucus and non-Freedom Caucus Republicans across numerous races heading into the Aug. 18 primary election.
AFP dispatched fliers in recent weeks saying Neiman, who is a Wyoming Freedom Caucus member, “Voted Against Wyoming Energy” and supported “legislation that would drive up energy costs,” bring “burdensome regulations that destroy energy jobs” and that he stood with “out of state interests over Wyoming families.”
Neiman has launched a series of Facebook videos to combat AFP’s statements.
“I got my new mailer for Ogden,” said Neiman in a June 25 video post.
The bill referenced under the “would drive up energy costs” claim, House Bill 257 of 2023, was actually about giving private landowners influence over reclamation work done on their property, said Neiman.
“So that was protecting a private property right,” he said.
The bill died for lack of a committee hearing. It would have required surface landowner approval before the state Department of Environmental Quality could approve a mine permit or reclamation plan revision.
The other bill AFP cited, House Joint Resolution 3 of this year’s session, would have barred the storage of any spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste in Wyoming, unless the people voted for that at the ballot box.
“This is all B.S.,” said Neiman in the video.
He echoed that in his Wednesday phone interview. He also theorized that Lindholm is waging a vendetta since Neiman defeated Lindholm in the latter’s 2020 bid for reelection, and since Lindholm and Driskill have worked together on business projects.
Lindholm denied both charges. He and Driskill worked together to save a radio station during the COVID pandemic, but Lindholm hasn’t received a check from that organization, he said.
Another project on which the pair worked together, a pairing of blockchain tech and beef tracking, fizzled around five years ago, said Lindholm.
‘Anyone Who Supported It Was Wrong’
Travis Deti, executive director of the Wyoming Mining Association, said his group opposed both the bills AFP referenced and has endorsed Driskill.
He said House Bill 257 would have stalled mining projects for years, overlooked the split estate ownership giving the mining sector “seniority in situations like that,” where “permits get modified all the time.”
“That was a terrible bill. Anyone who supported it was wrong,” said Deti.
Regarding the nuclear waste bill, Deti said his group opposed that as well, and it would have shifted a local community’s decision about welcoming nuclear projects within it to the entire state.
And This Is Rippling
Neiman fired shots at Driskill.
For example, Neiman emphasized in a video that left-leaning group Better Wyoming has “come out and endorsed Ogden.”
“That ought to tell you something,” said Neiman.
But Driskill had launched the first barbs of this campaign, deriding Neiman and the Freedom Caucus in his initial campaign interview with Cowboy State Daily in March.
Driskill said that Neiman has vowed to run a clean campaign, but that Neiman’s videos pose direct attacks over fliers and endorsements Driskill says he didn’t coordinate at all.
“If this is what he calls clean, I’d like to know what dirty is,” said Driskill.
As for AFP’s work and Better Wyoming’s endorsement, “The truth is, candidates have no control whatsoever on who endorses them, who helps them and who doesn’t,” he added.
Neiman countered, asking in his own interview if Driskill is going to reject Better Wyoming’s endorsement.
“He just needs a hug,” said Neiman with a laugh. “That’s all it is.”
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
