It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, October 20th. I’m Mac Watson.
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Although Wyoming has sent only Republicans to the U.S. House for 50 years, a national nonpartisan analysis group says the GOP lock on the state is no longer a certainty. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports Inside Elections has moved the race from “Solid Republican” to “Likely Republican.”
“So you got a political columnist saying, ‘yeah, you got strife in the Republican Party nationally,’ some ‘Anyone But Chuck’ people there in Wyoming, so couple that with Gray running ads on national, pretty generic, high interest issues right now. That Politico columnist took it as, ‘Yep, this maybe is shaky.’ Whereas Mary Kay Hill, a longtime politico here in Wyoming, who served as Governor Mead's chief of staff, she said, "Well, some of that advertising could be a response to just natural uncertainty about how many voters he'll pull from only having 25% coming out of the primary, and so there's a lot of unknowns.”
Wyoming hasn’t elected a Democrat to its U.S. House seat in 50 years, and the GOP primary election historically decides the general election winner.
Read the full story HERE.
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When a horse got lost in Yellowstone with an iPhone in his saddle last week, Verizon declined to ping its location to help. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports the owner, Paige Chavez, was thrilled the horse was found safe, but remains unhappy with the company.
“According to federal law, Verizon is legally obligated to help when there is a threat or danger to a person, but that provision did not apply in this situation because it was just the horse that was lost that is considered property. When Chavez and her family contacted Verizon, desperately seeking their help, the phone company was adamant that they could not give her any information. Ultimately, they did find the horse, but Chavez spoke with Cowboy State Daily and said she still hates Verizon.”
In its transparency reports, Verizon says it receives emergency requests from law enforcement involving threats of death or serious physical injury. In the second half of 2024 alone, Verizon reported receiving 36,564 emergency requests from law enforcement involving danger of death or serious physical injury.
Read the full story HERE.
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A 9-month-old Angus bull sold for a staggering $900,000 at a Billings auction Saturday. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that buyers are betting his genetics will produce generations of premium cattle worth millions.
“Auctioneer Roger Jacobs was very excited about this sale on Saturday. He got to the $900,000 and then started bidding for a million. And he was talking, he's saying, ‘I've never asked for this. I've never asked for a million before.’ It ended up stopping at 900,000, and he just exclaimed, ‘I sold a bull for 900,000!’ This was a record for the ranch, the Basin Angus Ranch in Montana, and it was also a record for the livestock barn in Billings. The money is more about the genetics and the physical makeup of the bull than it is about any meat that people will see in the freezer.”
The sale was an extraordinary moment for Montana cattleman Doug Stevenson, who has spent his life raising Angus cattle and knows a thing or two about producing valuable bulls.
Read the full story HERE.
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When a trailer flipped carrying cattle right outside a massive stock show and rodeo in Billings on Saturday, University of Wyoming grad Michaela Suter did what any rodeo person would do. Cowboy State Daily’s Emma Jane Jackson reports that Suter called in the cowboys to wrangle the loose herd.
“The Northern International Livestock Exposition, or NILE, was held in Billings over the weekend, drawing in thousands of people, when a livestock trailer carrying 84 head of cows crashed on the street right outside. With first responders arriving on the scene in minutes. Michaela Suter, the office manager for NILE and a University of Wyoming grad, decided to send in some more backup with two cowboys from NILE going out to help round up the cows. Traffic was at a standstill in one of Billings' busiest streets, and two pickup men on horseback with lassos came out. They ended up lassoing a calf who had escaped from the trailer.”
Billings Fire Department Incident Commander Darrek Mitchell tells Cowboy State Daily that the one loose calf was secured quickly, and only one cow died in the aftermath. Mitchell guessed that the cow suffocated, which was a better outcome than in a similar incident in Miles City in 2025 where numerous animals had to be euthanized. The street was reopened in under two hours.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll have more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily News continues now….
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A Cheyenne woman who runs an in-home daycare faces a charge of child endangering after police say she blew above a 0.40% on a blood alcohol test during a welfare check at the home. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports 34-year-old Breanna Mallo faces a misdemeanor charge after she was found to be allegedly intoxicated and admitting to police that she was “drinking a Busch Light and Fat Tire beer.”
“What made this one stand out was, number one, that the suspect is running a home daycare business out of her home, and when police did a welfare check at the house, she blew a blood alcohol content of more than 0.40, which is more than five times the legal limit. I spoke to a retired law enforcement officer who was a sheriff in Wyoming for 16 years. He said in his nearly 40 years of law enforcement, he's only seen that level of blood alcohol content twice, but in both cases, those people were taken to the hospital to be evaluated because it's that dangerous. Anything over a 0.40, statistically speaking, you should be unconscious.”
The affidavit doesn’t say why the Cheyenne Police Department Officer responded to Mallo’s home Thursday afternoon, only that it was in response to a request for a welfare check.
Read the full story HERE.
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An otherwise healthy 7-year-old Gillette girl was airlifted to Denver last week after a routine cold suddenly turned serious. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports Octaveia “Tavey” Mindrumer’s blood-oxygen level had plummeted, her heart was racing above 150 beats per minute and she needed continuous high-flow oxygen.
“They sent her to school on Monday, but hours later, she would be sent to the emergency room in Gillette, struggling to breathe. At the ER, she was diagnosed with rhinovirus, which is extremely common and usually symptoms subside on their own. However, in her case, she was also diagnosed with acute respiratory illness, and she was life-flighted to Children's Hospital Colorado in Aurora. After the girl arrived in Colorado, she was discharged the next day. Her parents said that doctors told them that this rhinovirus had made its way to her lungs, and that this year's rhinovirus has been a little bit more aggressive than in years past.”
Tavey's experience represents the extreme end of a common infection. Nationally, rhinovirus/enterovirus activity is elevated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's latest respiratory-virus update.
Read the full story HERE.
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The energy company behind a 2.7-gigawatt data center for Google in Cheyenne is donating $105 million to conservation and education efforts in Yellowstone. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports Gov. Gordon said he loves the Tallgrass donation because “Yellowstone needs infrastructure.”
“They said they wanted to do good for Wyoming. Wyoming's a huge part of their network, huge part of their story, and they said this was an area where we thought we could help Wyoming's kids and research and the infrastructure within the park, and Governor Gordon also was thrilled that there might be some people not thrilled with the private/public partnership, but he pointed out that there has been private industry involvement in Yellowstone pretty much all along.”
A Blackstone Infrastructure portfolio company, Tallgrass is headquartered in Kansas, operates primarily out of Colorado, and runs oil and natural gas infrastructure as well as carbon-sequestration operations.
Read the full story HERE.
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After spreading their father’s ashes on an elk hunt in the Snowy Range, two Casper brothers used the 1977 Chevrolet Scottsdale pickup their dad bought new in Medicine Bow to recover an elk. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that one brother says, “It was like one last hunt with Pop.”
“They used the 1977 Chevy Scottsdale pickup that their dad bought brand new from Cooper Chevrolet and Medicine Bow in 1977. That truck is still in the family, like the year before he died. So in 2022, the dad, Ken, passed that pickup down to his son Doug, and Doug still has it. They used it to pull the camper up and use it to go hunting just about a week ago, so that it's just really kind of cool how they were able to, you know, bring everybody together and go hunting with their dad's truck like they did, so many years when when he was alive.”
The family has gone to Elk Hunt Area 12 in the Snowy Range every fall since the late 1960s, Rick tells Cowboy State Daily. And this year was no exception.
Read the full story HERE.
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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.
