It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Wednesday, October 28th. I’m Mac Watson.
This newscast is sponsored by Lisa Kinney for Congress. Lisa has, Chuck hasn’t. That’s why former Gov. Mike Sullivan has endorsed Lisa Kinney for Wyoming House. Learn why Lisa is the choice for Wyoming’s future at Lisa Kinney for Congress dot com.
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The Trump administration sent DOJ election monitors to Cheyenne on primary election day, causing Gov. Mark Gordon to voice his concerns with the decision. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports the Wyoming Attorney General said, in an opinion released publicly Tuesday, that the law doesn't authorize them to be in polling places and can be removed.
“So the AG had gone through federal law, federal laws invoked by the DOJ, and found that none of them specifically authorized this DOJ election monitoring that happened in the primary election; that's expected to happen in the general election. And he noted that the county clerks and their election judges are supposed to keep random members of the public who aren't specifically authorized by law out of polling places supposed to have just nice, clean lines of voters, certain poll watchers appointed by parties and other officials. He even said the sheriff can get involved because it is a crime to disrupt an election.”
Gov. Gordon raised his concerns about the incident, stating his opposition to what he called surprising breaches of the state’s elections process. Secretary of State Chuck Gray defended the incident, saying election observation is allowed.
Read the full story HERE.
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As Kemmerer’s coal mine faces a 2029 shutdown and a looming hit to local tax revenues, community leaders are holding out hope for a late-stage turnaround. Cowboy State Daily’s Emma Jane Jackson reports the mayor says, “We’ve still got lots of good coal out there.”
“The mine has announced a closure date of 2029, but Kemmerer Mayor Robert Bowen says the story might not be over. He said that he's still hoping for some kind of Hail Mary – maybe a new industry coming in – finding another use for the coal, and he said there is still plenty of life left in the mine, if they were to mine across the highway. That plan was in the works for a while, but it got tabled since the company said they didn't want to invest the money right now.”
The Kemmerer coal mine traces its roots to the Kemmerer Coal Co., founded in 1897, and has operated as an open-pit mine since 1950. In recent years it has changed owners several times.
Read the full story HERE.
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Past-date chicken, shrimp and other foods are turning up on Wyoming grocery shelves, and shoppers notice. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that one Cheyenne shopper says, “I got sick once on some bad meat.”
“Albertsons has publicly acknowledged that the use-by and sell-by dates indicate freshness and quality. Suzanne Long, their chief officer, said that those don't indicate that something is unsafe, and that they try to make sure that they're not putting out food that could make someone potentially sick. I looked at data from ReFED, which is a national nonprofit that tracks food waste, and it looks specifically at Wyoming, and found that Wyoming retailers are throwing away 46% of their food, or about 47,000 pounds of food a day. That doesn't mean it's going in the garbage. Some of it is donated, some of it is composted, but almost the majority is not being bought by consumers.”
In Wyoming, and most of the country, selling food simply because it has passed the date printed on the package isn't illegal. Federal law generally treats most package dates as measures of quality rather than food safety.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming economists say a state income tax is on the table if Prop 1 passes, because it's a targeted way to get back the huge tax discounts the initiative would give wealthy people. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports Sen. Cale Case says, "It’s not a threat. It just makes income tax more logical.”
“Senator Cale Case's assertion that passing Prop 1, slashing some residential property taxes in half, would actually pave the way for a state income tax because of a very unique clause we have in our state constitution. And so, in the past, lawmakers have been like, ‘Should we do an income tax? Nah, people just wipe it out with their property taxes, right?’ Especially the wealthy. But with Prop 1 aiming to disproportionately help wealthy people with a quarter of its savings going to Teton County residents.”
If Prop 1 becomes law, it would favor Wyoming’s richest county, which is Teton County. But applying an income tax to the wealthy could reverse that disproportionate benefit, because the Wyoming Constitution says people can credit their sales, use, and property taxes against any income tax imposed.
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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More than 50 years after a 17-year-old Utah girl was killed, officials confirmed Tuesday that Melissa Smith is conclusively linked to notorious serial killer Ted Bundy. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reports that the case was solved after Bundy’s DNA profile was created from another case.
“They did not have definitive evidence to close this case. So what happened is one of the investigators got together with the two neighboring counties and went back carefully over all the case notes and all the evidence they had to look for correlations, and it was in this evidence that they found that they had biological samples that they could compare from both of the girls, which matched to Bundy's Y chromosome. So parlaying on that DNA technology, they were then able to compare that same DNA profile to one from Melissa Smith, and therefore, using the two combined with the other evidence, they were definitively able to say, “Okay, this is Bundy once and for all.’”
Tuesday’s announcement comes on the 52nd anniversary of the day Smith’s nude body was discovered on Oct. 27, 1974.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming regulators have officially signed off on the 650-megawatt Laramie Range Wind Project near Cheyenne. Cowboy State Daily’s Emma Jane Jackson reports the developer still faces 26 strict new conditions, including a 2.5-mile residential setback.
“It's a long process going through the final approval for this project, but the Repsol spokesperson I talked to said that it represents a really good economic opportunity for the company, but the Repsol spokesperson that I talked to said that it represents a really good economic opportunity both for the company and for the county as far as tax revenue, and it gives some ranchers who choose to lease their land an opportunity to diversify their income and secure their ranches for future generations.”
Justin Arnold, head of the Laramie County Planning Commission, tells Cowboy State Daily the state’s conditions changed the project so much that it no longer resembles what the company first submitted to the county.
Read the full story HERE.
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A non-U.S. citizen pleaded guilty Tuesday to illegally voting in Wyoming’s 2024 presidential election. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray confirmed that the man is the previously unnamed Carbon County voter his office identified in October 2025.
“30-year-old Maxim Shakirov pled guilty on Tuesday to voting in a federal election, despite knowing that he wasn't an American citizen. On November 5, in 2024, Shakarov voted at the Carbon County election polls, and his vote counted. Over a year later, the clerk called to investigate and check up on his citizen status. When he didn't return her phone calls, a local investigator got a hold of him and was able to talk to Shakirov, who admitted that he knew that he wasn't an American citizen. He said he had a green card, which is not the same as citizenship, and does not allow someone to vote in an election. I spoke with Chuck Gray on Tuesday, and he confirmed that Shakirov was one of three voters who voted illegally. Gray added that only United States citizens should be voting in Wyoming elections.”
Federal prosecutors eventually charged Shakirov with falsely and willfully representing himself as a U.S. citizen.
Read the full story HERE.
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What European deer callers consider an art, Americans might find hysterical. Germany’s champion red deer callers try to mimic their “roar” by cramming huge tubes into their mouths. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that one Wyoming hunter says it sounds like a Sasquatch having gastrointestinal problems.
“They have what they call red deer or red stags over there. They're a really close cousin of our elk, but they make an elk bugle when they're in the rut. There, the red deer make more of a roaring sound, and so to imitate that, they open their mouths as wide as they can and shove these tubes up in their mouths and recreate the grunts and roars of red deer, and it creates some visuals that some people find anywhere from utterly hysterical to maybe mildly disturbing.”
Wyoming hunting guide Brad Carpenter tells Cowboy State Daily that as far as the huge, awkward red deer calls, he says they’re similar to huge birchwood moose calls he saw hunters and guides using in the Yukon.
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.
