It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Thursday, August 20th. I’m Mac Watson.
–
After Tuesday's Republican primary election gutted the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, the caucus says it’s far from dead — and will regroup. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland spoke to former chair John Bear who says, “I don’t think any of us anticipated this kind of loss.”
“Representative Tom Kelly, who lost his bid for Superintendent of Public Instruction, was posting on Facebook, some are attributing this to disfavor over national issues, but really, there's a decline in populism nationally. And he said something like groups that are even aligned or kind of contingent with the Freedom Caucus are paying for this backlash against the populist movement. He said the upshot is that many solid conservative and libertarian voices are getting thrown out with the populace bathwater.”
Wyoming’s registered Republican voters ousted 13 of its allies in Tuesday’s primary election. At least 11 open seats went to non-Freedom Caucus candidates and at least 13 non-caucus incumbents survived the primary election.
Read the full story HERE.
–
After Tuesday’s primary, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus is being gutted from about a 35-member bloc in the state House to 10. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland’s reports that of those likely to reach the House after the general election, about 43 say they don’t align with the controversial caucus.
“Not having a majority obviously makes it harder to pass things that require simple majority, and then also knocks them down from that two thirds that's required to get billed across the introductory threshold during budget years. I mean, other things like the majority elects the House Speaker, for example, and then the House Speaker is deciding who's going on what committees and stuff like that. And so it's just everything boils down to the numbers.”
Noteworthy upsets included the ousting of House Appropriations Chair John Bear, Majority Floor Leader Scott Heiner, Cheyenne caucus members Reps. Gary Brown and Steve Johnson and Park County Rep. Nina Webber, who also serves as the state GOP’s national committee woman.
Read the full story HERE.
–
Among Wyoming GOP primary election winners, Treasurer Curt Meier got the best deal of campaign expense per vote at $1.61, and U.S. House nominee Chuck Gray the worst, at $44. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports including the runners-up, Reid Rasner spent the most with a staggering $209 per vote.
“Among the winners of the statewide Republican nominations, Treasurer Curt Meier got the best deal. He spent. Meier spent about a buck-61 a vote, so name recognition, incumbency, pretty efficient campaign. He did good. Whereas Secretary of State Chuck Gray, among the winners, got the worst deal at like $44 a vote. He was a big spender there in the you know the above a million dollar range, and then among all the contenders in statewide Wyoming races, including those who did not win the nomination, Reid Rasner topped all for the worst deal at $209 a vote. He spent more than $2 million on his U.S. House campaign. Kevin Christensen got way more than he bargained for, as Secretary of State Chuck Grace started actually campaigning for him and telling everyone that Christensen was in second place, and so Christensen ended up in third place in that crowded U.S. House race spending a buck-21 per vote.”
U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman won 83,794 votes for the GOP nomination to U.S. Senate, more than all three challengers combined. She spent $2.4 million, which makes for $28.67 per vote.
Read the full story HERE.
–
An Alta, Wyoming, man says he and his wife have received "nonstop death threats" since a confrontation with a pro-life group inside their Driggs coffee shop, Wydaho Roasters, went viral. Cowboy State Daily Kolby Fedore reports that owner Jim Sheehan says that fallout has been shocking.
“Sheehan asked them to stop their meeting in his place of business, and that's when the phones came out and the president of the group began filming Sheehan. In a now viral video posted by the group's leader, Kristan Hawkins, she recorded Sheehan comparing asking the group to leave as choosing not to host the KKK at his coffee shop. Even though the group left peacefully, Sheehan says that the fallout has been multiple death threats coming by call and online messages. He says most of these threats are coming from out of state. Locally, he said the community has been very supportive.”
Sheehan tells Cowboy State Daily that someone contacted him Sunday after seeing a post on a Teton Valley community Facebook page advertising an Abortion Free Teton Valley event at Wydaho Roasters.
Read the full story HERE.
–
I’ll have more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily News continues now….
–
The 2001 Clinton-era Roadless Rule could soon end, opening 3.3 million acres of national forests in Wyoming for road construction. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that Rep. Harriet Hageman calls the rule a disaster, while roadless supporters say it protects prime hunting, fishing and tourism.
“It disallows us to go in there and pull all this dead timber out of the national forest, and then subsequently, if all that dead timber starts on fire, you know why was it sitting there in the first place? A, and then B, if we don't have a good road system, we can't get in to effectively fight the fire. So that's the pro side of it. The con side of it that I heard from a couple people. The hunting and fishing guy says, ‘you start building roads, it could disrupt the wildlife habitat, put silt in the streams,’ those sorts of thing, and the tourism guy says, you know, people come from all over the world to see this pristine, undisturbed habitat here in Wyoming.”
Craig Benjamin, executive director of the Wyoming Wildlife Federation, tells Cowboy State Daily that if the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule is rescinded, affected areas in Wyoming could include the Bridger-Teton National Forest and parts of the Wind River, Wyoming, and Bighorn mountain ranges.
Read the full story HERE.
–
The 11 turbines at the Casper Wind Farm north of Evansville are finally coming down after years of inactivity. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports there were high hopes for the turbines when commissioned in 2009, but a former county commissioner now calls them an “eyesore.”
“County Commissioner Dave North told me that the only reason that they operated them was because they had to fulfill so many hours of operation. They never had a contract with Pacific Corp or Rocky Mountain Power to be able to send this electricity out somewhere so it would be useful. So after years of inactivity, the company has now decided to take them down. What they're going to do with the turbines is some of them, according to the company, will be possibly recycled. Other items associated with the field will be landfilled, but not in Casper, not in Natrona County, and probably not in Wyoming.”
Natrona County Commissioner Dave North said efforts to remove the machines started a few weeks ago.
Read the full story HERE.
–
Billionaire Joe Ricketts once wanted to build a mega-resort on his 1,300-acre ranch and rename Bondurant “Little Jackson Hole.” Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that now he's focused on “Saving Yellowstone.”
“He said it's probably better than it's been in 50 years, but we're reaching this tipping point, and he actually said that Starlink is the greatest threat to the ecosystem. Why is that? Well, because Starlink enables so many people to work and live remotely. Now a lot of people are choosing to come here to work and live. So we're kind of at this tipping point where we're expecting a big influx of population in one of the most you know pristine and fragile ecosystems, and it's his vision to kind of do what we can to conserve that while not choking off prosperity.”
The 85-year-old Ricketts says “Saving Yellowstone” is his first step on a journey to becoming a staunch supporter of better understanding and protecting the 20-million-acre Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.
Read the full story HERE.
–
A herd of cattle inadvertently broke into Yellowstone National Park earlier this week, grazing where no cattle have grazed for more than 120 years. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that’s because the park has banned issuing grazing permits in Yellowstone.
“In this case, there are a bunch of federal grazing allotments around Yellowstone National Park. Grazing livestock in Yellowstone has been banned for over a century. When you are grazing livestock in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, it's on whoever's leasing that particular lot of land to manage the fences and take account of their animals. And nobody's saying that whoever owned these privately owned cattle didn't do that. There's no reason to think this was any kind of nefarious stance against the government or trying to push for grazing leases in Yellowstone. That's never going to happen.”
The debate on federal grazing permits on public lands has been ongoing for decades, but commercial livestock grazing in Yellowstone has been prohibited since the early 1900s.
Read the full story HERE.
—
And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
