One of Wyoming’s few Democratic state lawmakers is calling a political action committee (PAC) a fellow Democratic legislator mobilized as “distortive” and harmful to what he thought was the higher political ground his party held in the state.
Jackson-based Democratic state Sen. Mike Gierau voiced consternation and disappointment in a Tuesday phone interview against the Keep Jackson Whole PAC that his colleague, Rep. Liz Storer, D-Jackson, formed late this election cycle.
It promoted some Democratic Teton County Commission candidates, including Storer’s husband, Commissioner Luther Propst, and it cast negative implications against others.
“I always thought we (Democrats) had the high ground,” said Gierau. “If you had a beef with somebody, tell us what the beef is. But I just thought those ads were highly distortive.”
The PAC made negative implications about other commission members while it contrasted those against its endorsements for Propst, Ali Dunford and Karyn Chin.
All three of them won the Aug. 18 primary and advance to the general election. Dunford and Chin effectively unseated incumbent Commissioners Wes Gardner and Mark Newcomb – unless they and the voters choose to overcome them with a write-in campaign in the general.
Gardner said he’s wrestling with whether to run a write-in campaign. Newcomb did not return a voicemail request for comment.
Gierau critiqued the PAC on the backdrop of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus – a Republican faction – losing most of its primary election bids this year, after its foes accused it of deceptive campaigning.
The caucus’ campaign arm, the WY Freedom PAC, dispatched its own distortive messaging in 2024, which Gierau said “torpedoed a lot of good people.” Some of those messages also prompted a defamation suit, which the PAC won on the First Amendment case law’s higher protections for people who malign public figures.
As for Storer’s PAC dispatching messages that Gierau cast as similar to the Freedom Caucus’ messaging, “it’s their right,” he said.
“But I wouldn’t want any part of it. And I thought it (showed) frankly, not the highest and best principles,” Gierau added. “At least not in the party I belong to.”
Storer countered in her own Tuesday phone interview by voicing surprise. She and Gierau had just been at a legislative meeting together in Jackson, she said.
“Well I guess I’m just disappointed Senator Gierau has not reached out to me directly to express his opinion,” said Storer. “He was sitting in our (committee) meeting this morning.”
Storer noted the positive campaign ads her PAC also launched, and said the community is concerned about over-development in Teton County and Jackson.
She also said she’s not sure if her PAC is the reason its three endorsees won. She praised the Propst and Dunford’s campaigns as effective operations.
Storer said her husband did not coordinate with her PAC, and Chin “didn’t know anything about it.”
She also sought to draw a distinction between the PAC and some of the Freedom Caucus’ support, noting that her PAC was funded by local community members.
The core dispute here has been a flashpoint in Teton County for years.
On the one hand, the county has a desperate housing shortage that forces many of its workers to commute or fight extreme prices. On the other hand, it’s difficult to expand housing without also easing restrictions on the ultra-wealthy people who snap up Teton County land and homes when they can.
Expansive government scrutiny and regulation has already resulted. Storer said it’s time for more.
“You had two young women who worked really hard to run campaigns, and did a good job,” said Storer of Dunford and Chin. “We’re going to hope they can do a better job on, kind of, reining in the amount of growth that we’re seeing.”
Unpack This
Teton County is Wyoming’s most reliable Democratic stronghold.
Three days before the Aug. 18 election, the startup PAC Keep Jackson Whole dispatched a text showing a picture of a controversial development, the Mogul Capital hotel, unfolding in Jackson.
The text contains the message, “Some current Teton County Commissioners would have you believe that it’s complicated to decide between development and preserving our way of life. It isn’t.”
The blast featured a photo of Propst, smiling, alongside Dunford and Chin, and a message endorsing them.
“We just need commissioners who will say no when a project isn’t community first,” it adds.
Gardner bristled in a phone interview, saying, “obviously that’s talking about me and Mark” because the message endorsed Propst and they were the only other sitting commissioners in the Democratic primary.
The county never signed off on the Mogul development and “never would,” said Gardner, because it’s a town, not county, development.
Storer conceded the Mogul project was a town, not county decision.
“But, you know, the voters they don’t distinguish very well,” she said. “I think it’s also - it’s an example. Here we’re (seeing) a hotel that actually catered to normal tourists got torn down, and is being developed into a high-end luxury short-term rail kind of place probably.”
That development is also very visible, said Storer.
The “issue” at the county level, said Storer, “is probably much more related to the whole development process for Northern South Park.”
That’s a 74-acre development on the southern edge of Jackson, owned by locals who have been trying for six years to gain government approvals to build.
The landowners say they are conveying 45 acres to private nonprofit groups Jackson Hole Community Housing Trust and Habitat for Humanity so the groups can build 70% of the slated neighborhood’s homes under perpetual price caps.
Storer said questions remain about “whether the developers are going to do what people think they’re going to do, and how much they’re actually being asked to provide for the affordable housing.”
Storer voiced concern that the affordable housing part of the project would turn into three- or four-story apartments.
She said she hopes Dunford and Chin will give it “greater scrutiny” than other members have.
Gardner, however, said he’s subjected that project to years of scrutiny and tried to form phased approaches and other guardrails for it.
He disputed the PAC’s text message which, in his view, implies that he’s anti-community.
“I take great exception to that. Nothing could be further from the truth,” said Gardner. “That was such an egregious misrepresentation.”
But when the text emerged, said Gardner, he didn’t know who was driving the PAC.
The Fish
One day before the election, the PAC blasted another text, saying Teton County has real water-quality issues such as E. coli in the creeks.
“But members of the commission voted to put a septic tank right on the banks of the Hoback River,” the text says.
That text accompanies a photo of a pair of hands holding a small fish. Scoffing, Gierau called the fish “emaciated.”
Gardner said the ad links to the 2024 efforts of single mom and architect Rachel Ravitz to build a home in the Hoback River area. The Teton County Commission denied her variance requests, but Gardner sided with her on all three, calling her plan “far and away the most thoughtful” application he’d seen.
He echoed that. He said Ravitz’s proposed septic system would have pumped black water away from the river to be removed and only allowed grey water into her leach field.
Newcomb opposed Gardner and voted against the septic system.
Now-former Teton County Commissioner Greg Epstein, who didn’t run in this year’s election, had voted with Gardner to approve the septic system.
“No septic system in the county (is) as protective of clean water as this one,” he said. “To me this is the type of dedication to clean water I want to encourage.”
Late In The Game
Storer filed a formation of her PAC with the Teton County Clerk’s office 12 days before the primary election, listing herself as chair and local businessman Lee Bauknight as treasurer.
The campaign finance report was due Aug. 11. It was filed Aug. 19, the document says.
It lists a $2,500 donation by Storer on Aug. 10 and two $5,000 donations by locals James Speyer and Charles Thomson, made on election day.
Gardner called Storer’s late filing "likely not coincidental." The negative ads also came so late, he wasn't able to respond to them in time, he said.
Gierau was dour about the late filing.
“To form the PAC, raise money, and get past the election before you even tell us who you are?” Gierau said. “Error of omission maybe.”
Gierau reiterated his concerns about the party’s dropping “high ground.”
Storer said the late filing wasn’t strategic at all. She said she tried to file the campaign report on the county’s website while traveling, found and struggled with an outdated and dysfunctional PDF, and later coordinated filing the correct form with the county clerk.
Sure, But
Chin told Cowboy State Daily she wasn’t involved with the PAC at all, but was grateful for its support.
She said it’s not like the Freedom Caucus, and it amplifies real concerns in the community.
Chin says the Freedom Caucus lost so many seats Aug. 18 because of its policies.
As for the PAC contrasting the Mogul town project with a decision commissioners made, “I wasn’t involved in choosing the graphics; I noticed the same thing,” said Chin.
While the PAC could have chosen a better graphic, said Chin, some of the commissioners “have favored developers over individual families (and) workforce folks who keep our community running.”
Gardner disputes that, at least on his own behalf. He said he’s sought to fix the housing-shortage crisis in his community through thoughtful, innovative, tailor-made solutions.
“You solve it one house at a time, for one household at a time,” said Gardner.
He said he hopes the Northern South Park development can complete its county approvals before the year is out, and the new commission is sworn in.
Propst did not return a voicemail request for comment by publication.
Dunford, like Chin, said she was grateful for the PAC's support and willingness to disrupt the "status quo."
Across social and economic groups, said Dunford, she's heard locals are tired of the luxury development "privatizing the benefit and socializing the harms and losses onto the community."
Dunford said she didn't coordinate with the PAC, and believes its out-of-context graphic was merely symbolic of the type of development voters want to reject.
Lastly, The Primary Quandary
Gardner lamented Wyoming’s tight primary election laws.
To vote in a partisan primary election, people have to choose a party before the candidate filing period opens. That means people decide which primary they’re voting in before they know for sure which candidates are participating.
In Teton County, that means choosing whether to register as Republican and influence the historically red statewide elections, or to register as Democratic and hold greater sway over county-level elections.
Gardner, who ran prior as an Independent and considers himself an “FDR Democrat” with a penchant for innovation and creativity, said many of his supporters are independent-minded people who shun picking a party. Some are democratic-minded people who want to influence statewide elections.
And in May, he urged his supporters to register as Democrats so they could vote for him. But that was before his race was defined or contentious, he said.
“Meanwhile, I’m standing here, and I can’t tell you how many people, like regular people … were like ‘Yeah, I tried to vote for you, and I couldn’t,’” said Gardner.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
