A former Wyoming Republican Party chair has endorsed the Constitution Party’s nominee for governor, Rebecca Bextel.
Frank Eathorne chaired the party for eight years.
“During those years the platform Republicans ran the party,” he said in a Sunday YouTube video announcing his endorsement of Bextel. “The primary we got out-funded by the George Soros Democrats and liberals, and socialists.”
Eathorne said that “does not force us” to vote for the Republican Party nominees in the general election.
“Folks, meet Rebecca Bextel, she is a Constitution Party gubernatorial candidate. I’m voting for her because I’m a principled Republican, and I know you want to save Wyoming,” Eathorne said in the video.
Both Made Headlines
In Eathorne’s tenure, he was a magnet for headlines, though reticent with the press.
Bextel, who is in the real estate business, has also drawn numerous headlines since handing out campaign donation checks to state House of Representatives members on the House floor during session in what became known as “CheckGate."
She switched from Republican to Constitution Party in May, then declared a run for governor under the minor party’s banner.
She cast her campaign as an “insurance policy against Eric Barlow,” the GOP nominee, whom she accuses repeatedly of being a “Democrat.”
Barlow has served in the Wyoming Legislature as a Republican for nearly 14 years, first in the House and now in the Senate, representing constituents in the area of Gillette, the coal capital of Wyoming.
The Platforms
Bextel told Cowboy State Daily in a Tuesday text message that, “Frank Eathorne chaired the Republican Party for eight years and I think he knows how to recognize a real Republican.”
She said she’ll promote the 23 planks of the Republican platform “within the Constitution Party, just like Eric Barlow is promoting the Democrat’s values within the Republican Party.”
Barlow’s spokeswoman Rebekah Fitzgerald said his team does not have a comment regarding the Eathorne endorsement or Bextel’s statement about it.
The Wyoming Constitution Pary’s platform says, “The only legitimate role of government is to secure our God-given right of life, liberty, and the ownership and control of property.”
The platform calls for Constitution Party leaders and candidate to exhibit qualities of “honesty, integrity, reliability, fidelity, prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude and courage.”
JoAnn True Not Impressed Here
JoAnn True, a former Natrona County Republican Party delegate to the state GOP, cast Eathorne’s move as hypocritical.
Eathorne wrote a 2020 guest column for Cowboy State Daily defending the party’s vote that year to censure True for backing a political action committee (PAC) that had in turn given money to some Democrats.
The PAC’s mission was to get more women into political roles. It also gave money to Republicans.
“The Republican brand is important. It means something,” wrote Eathorne at the time.
“The reason most people devote time to serve in the various levels of the Republican party is to translate the Republican brand into governing principles applied through electing Republicans,” he wrote, “who then in turn govern as Republicans.”
True was unimpressed with Eathorne’s Sunday announcement.
“Now the former chair of the Wyoming State Republican Party is endorsing a non-Republican. Quite a turn for the man who preached ‘ride for the brand,’” she said in a Tuesday text message.
True said Eathorne’s announcement means, “when voters tell you who they want in the Primary, you take your ball and go to another party.”
“His endorsement of this unserious candidate,” True added, “says all anyone needs to know about Frank’s waning credibility.”
Eathorne did not return a voicemail request for comment by publication.
Democrat?
Often cast as a moderate, Barlow has pushed for Medicaid expansion in the past, but now says that is not the right option for Wyoming.
He’s pointed to the Trump-backed Rural Health Transformation Program as a better avenue for the state.
During his primary election campaign, detractors falsely accused Barlow of pushing for a fuel tax hike, when in fact he fought to keep fuel taxes low.
He’s also been targeted as a proponent of males in girls’ sports, though he helped to pass the Legislature’s successful bills banning male participation in girls’ school sports.
He voted in favor of Wyoming’s multiple abortion bans.
One of the higher-publicity moments of Barlow’s legislative career came in 2023, when he championed a program to let nonviolent felons have their gun rights restored.
To Eathorne’s Soros Point
Many PACs and groups active in Wyoming are linked to dark money, which means money of unknown personal origin.
The nonprofit group Wyoming Donor Alliance, which opposed the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, received $100,000 from the North Carolina-based State Leadership project in 2024, filings show.
George Soros’ Open Society network gave money to the Tides Foundation, which has given the State Leadership Project more than $1.1 million since 2020.
It is difficult to pin the Wyoming Donor Alliance’s influence on Wyoming politics onto the George Soros group, however, since dark-money groups give to and receive from many different entities.
That often leaves doubt as to whether a given upstream group’s money made it to a particular downstream group, or stopped at one of the many other entities to which it gave directly.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
