For the first time, the Park County Republican Party has waded into the primary election process: The party’s governing body voted last week to endorse 13 of the 34 Republicans running for local offices.

Within the contested races, the party’s endorsees include Dan Laursen, Karin Richard and Tim Lasseter for county commission, Jimmy Rush for  county clerk, Ericka Smith for county attorney, Troy Bray for county treasurer and Paul Hoeft, Nina Webber, Dalton Banks, Matt Legler, Carlin Jones and Levi Asay for the Wyoming Legislature.

To be eligible for the endorsement, candidates had to fill out a questionnaire and express agreement with at least 80% of the Wyoming Republican Party platform.

Among the local candidates, 10 declined to fill out the party’s survey, while another 11 met the 80% threshold, but didn’t receive an endorsement.

As part of its brand new vetting process, the party could have theoretically endorsed all of the Republican candidates on the ballot or none.

“It’s not a race,” party Chairman Vince Vanata said early last month. “It’s, do they meet the criteria of having that brand after their name?”

The decision of whether or not to endorse a given candidate was left up to precinct committee members, who make up the party’s governing body. Of the roughly 100 current committeemen and women, 56 participated in Thursday’s endorsement process. Members cast ballots that were counted by a three-member group made up of Richard, Christen Rush — who is Jimmy Rush’s wife — and Debbie Velez of Powell.

After the vote tallies were announced, precinct committeewoman Nancy Brown of Cody expressed frustration. Brown said she’d mistakenly understood that everyone who supported 80% of the platform would be endorsed.

“I just am stunned,” she said, “because what’s happened is this has become, in fact an …”

“Don’t say ‘purity test,’” Vanata interjected.

“It’s become an election,” Brown finished, asking later, “How can someone who met the threshold not be endorsed?”

“Because the people have spoken,” Vanata said.

It was also noted that Republican voters will have the ultimate say in the Aug. 18 primary election.

‘It is not a violation’

Until last month, the description on the Park County Republican Party’s Facebook page stated that the party did not vet Republican candidates.

“... we believe in the primary process,” the text concluded.

However, the description was recently updated, as the party plans to issue endorsements across the state ahead of the Republican primary election.

The GOP has historically shied away from involvement in the primary, due in part to a Wyoming law that bars major political parties from financially backing any candidates when there is intraparty competition. The statute says that, “No political party funds shall be expended directly or indirectly in the aid of the nomination of any one person as against another person of the same political party running in the primary election.”

The Wyoming Republican Party is currently challenging that law in federal court, asserting it infringes on the party’s constitutional rights. However, party leaders are adamant that endorsements are already allowed. 

“... The endorsement of candidates [in the primary] is in no way, shape, or form … anywhere barred in state statute,” party Vice Chair Bob Ferguson said at a June 4 meeting. “A lot of people think it did, it does, [but] that is not part of state statute. It is not a violation.”

Vanata said Thursday that the party has not and will not spend any funds on its endorsements. He also said they’re part of the group’s right to free speech.

“If a nonprofit, nonpolitical activist organization, such as Wyoming Rising, can pay $1,800 for a billboard to endorse President Biden and Vice President Harris, for goodness’ sakes, why can’t we as the Republican Party look at the candidates and say, ‘These are the people who we have vetted, these are the people who have responded’?” Vanata asked the body. “Why do we exist?”

Precinct committeewoman Dona Becker of Powell spoke in favor of the new endorsement process at the early June meeting. She said there are Republicans who get elected to the Legislature and then “vote with Democrats.”

“Don’t say you’re a Republican and lie and have people vote for you as a Republican and then go to session and vote with the Democrats,” Becker said. “So I am really happy that the Republican Party is now going to be telling people, ‘This person says they’re a Republican, but they are not.’”

The vetting process

Ultimately, the party did not vet candidates’ voting records or statements. Precinct committeeman Richard Jones of Wapiti, who headed up the vetting committee, said that was due to a lack of time and an inability to evenly compare every candidate. The body was simply presented with the candidates’ responses to the platform questionnaire — which ultimately weren’t the determining factor for endorsements.

For example, commission candidates Lasseter, Richard and Laursen each expressed disagreement with one of the state platform’s 23 planks, but still received the party’s backing over Barb Poley and Duncan Bonine, who expressed 100% agreement with the platform, and incumbent Commissioner Lloyd Thiel, who was at 96%.

In a Wednesday Facebook post, Bonine likened the party’s endorsement process to The Wizard of Oz. He wrote that, “in a stunning display of political wizardry, the winners were pretty much exactly who everyone guessed they would be before the show even started.”

Bonine said his 100% alignment with the platform came from convictions he’s tried to live out for decades, telling voters that “when the smoke clears and the curtain is pulled back, I hope you’ll look beyond endorsements and political theater” to character, experience and service.

Lack of responses

The party also sought responses from the more than 150 Republicans who are running for the 108 precinct committee positions within the county party; those elected in August will be in charge of directing the party and its platform over the coming two years.

The party didn’t issue endorsements in those precinct races, but Vanata said they plan to publicly disclose which committee members did and didn’t respond to the survey.

Overall, the vetting committee said it received questionnaires back from 87 of 183 local candidates.

Jones said he was “shocked” by the low response rate. He said he assumes those who failed to respond didn’t care about the party’s bylaws and didn’t want to go on record as supporting the party, though a couple members said the surveys went to the wrong email account or were lost in spam folders.

“We want to know that people who are running for these offices substantially support the beliefs that most of us have in this group,” Jones told the body, “and if they don’t want to stand up for that or tell us what their beliefs are, I don’t care if it’s your mother, your son, your best friend, take that into consideration.”

Declining to participate

Park County Coroner Cody Gortmaker, who is running unopposed, was among those who declined to return the survey.

Gortmaker said he’s a conservative Republican and supports the party’s platform and principles, but doesn’t participate in general questionnaires, “as responses can sometimes be taken out of context or reduced to simple checkboxes.”

“Instead,” he wrote in a June 16 statement, “I encourage voters to consider my record of service and to speak with community members who have worked with me or my office.”

Gortmaker also said that he works to serve all citizens with professionalism, dignity and respect, “regardless of their faith, financial circumstances, or political affiliation.”

Republican Hans Odde, a deputy Park County clerk who’s running for the office’s top spot, also declined the survey. Odde said in a June 12 Facebook post that he wasn’t seeking the party’s endorsement, but “the endorsement of all the citizens of Park County.”

He described the clerk’s office as “essentially a nonpartisan office that requires a focus on public service to every single person who walks through our doors, regardless of their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or political affiliation.” 

A couple days before Odde’s post, his opponent, Jimmy Rush, announced that he had “zero issues telling whoever want[s] to know how conservative I am and that I support the Republican platform 100%.”

“Liberals want privacy about their beliefs and to keep things hidden,” Rush wrote on Facebook. “Transparency is the cure!”

He earned the party’s endorsement last week, with 44 of 56 votes in support.