The Teton County Republican Party issued a quick self-correction this week after asking people to donate above the legal limit by marking specific candidates’ names on checks to the party.
The original email the party released around Monday night had said, “If you are so inclined to donate more than the $1,500 max, you can always write a check to the ‘Teton County Republican Party’ with the local Republican candidate’s name in the memo.”
The party doesn’t have a contribution limit to local campaigns, but people can’t give more than $1,500 to candidates for non-statewide offices, or more than $2,500 to statewide candidates, under state law.
State law also bars the workaround.
The statute, 22-25-102(f), says contributions to political parties “shall be a matter of internal party governance” and the party authorities must choose which candidate gets the money.
It can’t be “exclusively dedicated to any particular candidate,” the law says.
‘Very Appreciative'
Teton County GOP Chair Kat Rueckert told Cowboy State Daily in a Wednesday phone interview that a local Democrat who follows the party’s email blasts alerted her to the problem.
Rueckert said she was “very appreciative” for the heads-up, and promised to make a correction.
“Everyone wants to be aboveboard,” Rueckert said. “My mistake on that, and we got it corrected as soon as we possibly could.”
She issued a correction at 8 a.m. the next morning, said Rueckert, who also sent Cowboy State Daily that email.
People can still give sizable donations to the Teton County Republican Party’s general fund, but not “to specific candidates,” says the email.
“We were not trying to circumvent (statute) at all,” Rueckert told Cowboy State Daily.
The email emphasizes that the party shares its finances routinely with both its executive and central committee members
‘Refreshing’
Bill Schwartz, a Jackson-based attorney who has worked in election-law litigation for years, said state law “specifically limits an end-run” around the donation limit for “obvious” reasons.
“Without it, individuals could give limitless amounts to their favored candidates simply by funneling their contributions though a political party or political action committee,” he said.
Anyone who gives or accepts money in that manner could face the $5,000 civil penalty listed in the law, Schwartz added.
But hearing of Rueckert’s interview taking accountability and email correcting the move, Schwartz was heartened.
“Well, I always find that refreshing when somebody in this day and age does that, rather than trying to defend themselves or take an absurd interpretation,” said the attorney. “I applaud that, actually.”
There were other aspects of the original fundraising email that Schwartz disputed, such as Rueckert’s assertion that her calculations had shown that 43% of the Republican primary election ballots in Teton County were cast by “cross-over Democrat voters.”
Schwartz is challenging Wyoming’s crossover voting restriction in the Wyoming Supreme Court, and cast attempts to pin down voters’ ideology that way as unjust.
On general election day 2024, Teton County had 7,305 registered Republicans and 4,497 registered Democrats.
But the county gave an inverse associational message when voting that day: 8,748 voters chose Kamala Harris for president and 4,134 selected Donald Trump.
The Island
The Teton County GOP works within the only consistently Democratic-leaning county of Wyoming’s general elections.
Teton County has extensive housing and land regulations, majority Democratic representation in the Legislature and county offices, an extreme influx of wealth and exorbitant home prices.
The local Republican Party doesn’t enjoy the same dominance as its counterparts in other Wyoming counties, such as Niobrara, which has about 40 registered Democrats.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
