Republican voters back Rep. Newsome

Challenger Webber saw surge of support on Election Day

Posted 8/20/20

State Rep. Sandy Newsome, R-Cody, fought off an aggressive primary challenge on Tuesday to advance toward a second term in the Wyoming House.

In the Republican primary election, Newsome collected …

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Republican voters back Rep. Newsome

Challenger Webber saw surge of support on Election Day

Posted

State Rep. Sandy Newsome, R-Cody, fought off an aggressive primary challenge on Tuesday to advance toward a second term in the Wyoming House.

In the Republican primary election, Newsome collected 1,237 votes (49.3%), to finish 369 votes and nearly 15 percentage points ahead of former Hot Springs County Clerk Nina Webber, who had campaigned hard for the seat. Former state Rep. Scott Court finished a distant third with 404 votes in House District 24.

“I’m just honored that people decided to vote for me,” Newsome said Wednesday. “I think it sends a clear message that … especially in these times, it’s important to keep some continuity as we go forward through what’s going to be a pretty brutal budget session.”

The battle between Webber and Newsome was unusually bitter, with both the challenger and incumbent taking out negative ads against the other.

Webber set the tone at the outset of the campaign, unveiling a pair of billboards that pictured her in hunting garb alongside a rhinoceros, with text explaining that she was “going Western on Wyo RINOS [Republicans in Name Only].”

Webber later took out an ad describing Newsome, who moved to Cody in 1982, as “a Colorado transplant” whose votes “are for a Colorado type Blue state.”

Meanwhile, Newsome’s campaign set up a “Nina Webber Facts” website that panned her past performance as county clerk in Thermopolis — prominently featuring an image of Webber's face with a no symbol over it — and faulted Webber for running for the Legislature only two years after moving to Park County.

“I thought it was awful,” Newsome said of the negative campaigning. The lawmaker said she stuck to criticism of Webber’s performance as a public servant, which she said was fair game. Newsome said the criticism of her voting record in the House was fair game, too. However, “name-calling and all that, should not happen,” she said.

The tone grew particularly uncivil on social media. Within a local Facebook group, commenter Terry Sable described Newsome in late June as “anti-American, pro illegal alien mexican/hispanies [sic], pro liberal socialist democrat homosexual transvestites” with an “abhorrent voting record for conservatives.”

Responded Scott Weber, Webber’s partner, “You have done your homework, Terry! Good job!”

Court, meanwhile, ran a much lower key campaign in his bid to reclaim the seat he held from 2017-2018. He did not participate in several candidate forums and ran newspaper ads that highlighted, in part, his support of the University of Wyoming football program.

Campaign finance reports filed last week showed some $43,700 had been committed toward the House District 24 race, with a significant chunk coming from outside of Park County; more conservative groups and individuals — including a couple members of the Park County Republican Party leadership team — rallied behind Webber, with more moderate influencers — including former U.S. Sen. Al Simpson and his wife, Ann — defending Newsome.

The election results show Newsome had the backing of the majority of rank-and-file Republicans, too, though there was a big split between early and same day voters.

Newsome found significantly more favor among early and absentee voters, winning 57% of those 1,408 ballots to Webber’s 27.2%. However, Webber saw a substantial surge of support on Election Day. She took 44% of those 1,103 ballots to Newsome’s 39.1% to gain some ground, though not enough.

Other Republican incumbents in the Legislature — such as House Majority Whip Tyler Lindholm, R-Sundance — fell to more conservative challengers on Tuesday and Newsome said the House “will look a lot different” next session.

Going forward, Newsome said the state budget will be a priority for the Legislature, but so is “getting Wyoming back to work, getting people moving to normalcy, moving so that businesses can get back to normal” amid “this awful pandemic.”

Newsome specifically said she’d like to see the Legislature make federal CARES Act funding available to more nonprofit organizations that were hit by COVID-19 and restrictions related to the pandemic. She noted that many fundraising events had to be canceled, with some groups having “no opportunity to make any adjustments.”

Newsome gave the example of the Cody-based Wyoming Outdoorsmen, which had to cancel its annual banquet in April — a fundraiser that typically draws 600 or 700 people.

“I think there should be some CARES Act funding to help those organizations survive,” she said, not necessarily to make them whole, but to “help them get through this hump.”

Newsome does not appear to have a challenger for November’s general election, but Tuesday’s results don’t appear to have ended the battle for the Legislature between more conservative and moderate factions of the Republican party.

“A huge THANK YOU to all who have supported my efforts in our fight for liberty against the far left,” Webber posted to her Facebook page Tuesday’s night. “Even though I do not move forward in this race WE must never stop fighting!”

Election 2020

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