Wyoming’s gubernatorial campaign is ratcheting up with attack ads now targeting Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder.
One of her two Republican opponents, Sen. Eric Barlow, has been the target of attack ads for weeks by both TV and mail.
A new political action group (PAC) that registered in Wyoming on Aug. 5 has started airing a commercial against Degenfelder, implying she engaged in “dirty deals” while working for a coal company.
U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman condemned the ad and blamed Barlow for it in a Monday Facebook post.
Degenfelder spokeswoman Charlotte Jones did the same in a Monday email to Cowboy State Daily.
Barlow, conversely, says he did not orchestrate the ad, and he too condemns it.
First, The Narrative
The ad opens on a female voice and an artificial intelligence-rendered avatar of Degenfelder in a sleek black suit.
“For Megan Degenfelder, dirty politics was just business as usual,” the ad alleges. It says Degenfelder was “paid thousands to lobby for loopholes that let her company dodge millions in local taxes.”
It then notes that her company went bankrupt.
“Degenfelder made money, Wyoming got left holding the bag,” the ad says, showcasing a July 2019 WyoFile story reporting that Cloud Peak Energy coal company still owed Campbell County around $30-$40 million in unpaid taxes after it filed for bankruptcy.
The ad does not say what “loopholes” allowed that.
Second, The Facts
Before August 2017, when then-Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow hired Degenfelder, the latter worked in government affairs for Cloud Peak Energy in Gillette.
Cloud Peak Energy in August 2019 found a buyer, Navajo Transitional Energy, which agreed to pay the company’s taxes, Northern Wyoming News reported.
Wyoming Secretary of State filings say Degenfelder was a registered lobbyist for Southland Royalty Company LLC from 2016 into early 2021. That was an oil and gas company, OG Landman reported.
Third, The Backlash
Barlow and Degenfelder, now both the targets of political action groups’ high-profile TV attack ads, both deny coordinating those ads.
Team Degenfelder doesn’t believe Barlow, a Monday email from Jones says.
“Wyoming voters know hypocrisy when they see it,” said Jones. “At the same time Eric Barlow decries negative campaigning calling him to task on his record, his out-of-state allies are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on an entirely AI-generated attack ad on Megan Degenfelder’s career fighting for Wyoming’s coal industry and energy jobs.”
Jones calls the ad a misguided attack and even more of an attack on Wyoming’s coal and energy industry and workers.
She also called it “consistent with Eric Barlow’s record of siding with environmental activists over Wyoming coal miners. Wyoming voters should take note, it speaks volumes about whose side Eric Barlow is on and how he would govern.”
Hageman was also unimpressed and redoubled her long-standing support for Degenfelder.
“I have learned first-hand as a legislator that what you say in a campaign defines what you will do when elected, and this ad speaks volumes,” said Hageman. “Campaigning on an anti-coal message shows that this is a concerted effort to stop production of one of our biggest assets.”
She called the Powder River Basin Resource Council, which the Barlow family helped to build, a "passion project" of the state senator's.
Barlow countered that he’s pro-coal and pro-energy, and not behind the ad.
“I’m from Campbell County. I grew up in Campbell County,” said Barlow. “I’ve been elected six times in Campbell County, by coal miners and rig hands.”
On the one hand, Barlow had banded with other western ranchers and landowners in 2002 to oppose what he then cast as irresponsible energy development on northern Wyoming ranchlands, and had ties then to the environmental group Powder River Basin Resource Council. Vanity Fair named him an “Eco-Hero” in 2007.
On the other hand, he spearheaded an effort in 2014 to reduce severance taxes for coal. It wasn’t successful that year but later, more incremental bills drove coal severance taxes down in 2022 and 2025 with Barlow’s aye votes.
He also said he ran a budget amendment to move a coal mining road and allow for 97 million more tons of coal to be mined.
“For anybody to think I’m not supportive of coal and oil and gas and uranium is disingenuous,” he said. “And they’re just trying to dredge something up that does not exist.”
After the anti-Degenfelder ad aired, Barlow took to Facebook himself to condemn disparaging ads “against other gubernatorial candidates.”
“So I am not involved and I don’t know who is, and I want them all to stop,” he said. “These outside money outside agendas outside voices trying to push Wyoming people around, knock it off … We don’t need you.”
As for the third well-known Republican candidate in that race, retired Marine Corps Col. Brent Bien, his campaign outreach coordinator Cheryl Aguiar also said the Bien campaign had nothing to do with the ad.
"We don’t have any money," said Aguiar with a laugh. "I mean if we were to do an ad it would be to say good things about Brent, promote him. I don’t even know anything about her coal stuff."
And, The Tangents
The anti-Degenfelder PAC Keep Wyoming Working listed Armada Strategies as its ad buyer in an Aug. 6 Federal Communications Commission filing, with a Florida contact, Taylor Fernie, listed as the billing contact.
Fernie in turn is listed as a senior buyer with AxMedia, the same firm buying ads for the group Barlow for governor. Similar crossover between the firms has surfaced in other races.
“They do races all over the country,” Barlow countered, “and I don’t have any idea what other things they do. So I can’t speak to what a national company does.”
Jones said previously that Degenfelder is not affiliated with the federal issues group Women for Responsible Government Action. Regarding the state-level PAC, Jones added, “The campaign has not and is not permitted to communicate or coordinate with outside groups."
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
