A group of Fremont County Republican legislative candidates have declined invitations to a series of candidate debates, drawing a public rebuke this week from local GOP leadership.
“My concern is that if Tim Salazar, Pepper Ottman, Tina Clifford, and Joel Guggenmos will not face voter questions before the election, will they listen to us if elected?” Fremont County GOP Chairman Scott Harnsberger said.
The issue began earlier this month when those candidates and a fifth, Rep. Sarah Penn (R-Lander), placed an advertisement in the Dubois Frontier.
“As conservative Republican candidates, we will not engage in any forums with the League of Women Voters,” according to the ad signed by Sen. Salazar (R-Riverton), Reps. Ottman (R-Riverton) and Penn (R-Lander), as well as challengers Guggenmos and Clifford.
All five are running to represent Fremont County communities in the Legislature, and the three incumbents are either members or allies of the hard-line Freedom Caucus.
Ottman initially accepted the invite but then dropped out, organizers told WyoFile, while Penn had not been invited since her primary race is uncontested.
Otherwise, they’d each been invited to participate in Republican forums in Shoshoni, Dubois and Lander throughout July — all of which had been organized by the Fremont County GOP, Republican Women of Fremont County, the Fremont County Democratic Party and the League of Women Voters of Fremont County.
But the rub with the forums, according to the candidates’ newspaper ad, is the league’s national organization. More specifically, the candidates pointed to the league’s position on abortion, voter identification, semiautomatic weapons and former President Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“These positions are opposed to our conservative values. We are not confident that the League is non-partisan as the League claims,” the ad states, echoing a national trend of candidates on the right turning against the organization and snubbing their invites.
While the Fremont County chapter of the league got its start just four years ago, the national organization formed in 1920 with the intention of helping newly enfranchised women vote. In the century since, the role of local chapters has evolved to educate voters via hosting debates and conducting candidate surveys. While the organization does not endorse candidates, and identifies as nonpartisan, it’s long been considered by some to lean progressive.
But that’s all besides the point, according to Harnsberger.
The format, topics and questions for the upcoming forums were crafted with a Republican lens and are reflective of the party’s platform, Harnsberger said.
“I have been involved in local Republican politics for almost 40 years. I have never seen a group of individuals running for office that were ‘too conservative’ to answer questions in front of Republican voters about education funding, property tax reform, rural healthcare and state spending,” Harnsberger said.
It’s important for voters to hear candidates speak their minds in an unscripted setting like a debate, Harnsberger said.
WyoFile did not receive a response from Salazar, Ottman, Penn, Guggenmos or Clifford to several written questions by press time.
They are not the only Republican candidates in Wyoming to avoid debates this election cycle. Wyoming PBS canceled a debate set for next month after U.S. Sen. John Barrasso and U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman declined to participate, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reported earlier this week.
Collaborating on events
When the league first contacted Harnsberger earlier this summer to ask if the local GOP would want to help organize the debates, Harnsberger said he was skeptical “when my goal is to nominate Republican candidates that will win the election in November.”
But the league representatives said they would defer to him and Tara Berg, president of the Republican Women of Fremont County, “regarding the format of the events and the topics of all questions asked. The League would then pay for all of the promotion, provide some manpower, and live-stream each event,” Harnsberger said.
And that’s exactly how things went, Harnsberger added.
“In the end, we have worked out a format and drafted questions that meet our goal of educating Republican voters.”
The league’s Michelle Escudero said she’s also happy with how organizing efforts went. Once the four organizations agreed to collaborate, they formed a committee and got to work.
“All of us read and became familiar with the Republican platform. And that was a particular request, which seems appropriate considering these are Republican candidates,” Escudero said. “The Republican Party had final say on all questions, but no negotiating needed to happen, because we all were super pleased with the final list of questions.”
The league in Fremont County has traditionally put on forums for the general election, but Escudero said it switched things up this year in light of so few Democrats running for office.
Ahead of the primary, Escudero said the debates “provide an even platform for all candidates to put forth their ideas and their platform in a very neutral setting.”
It also gives voters something they won’t get from candidate advertisements, which offer “a very limited amount of information,” Escudero said.
“Fremont County citizens, they have the desire, they have the right to have information from these candidates,” Escudero said. “And by not participating, those candidates are infringing on those rights.”
While the five candidates won’t be attending the forums, each one filled out the league’s candidate guide.
The first of the three forums is tonight in Shoshoni at the Firehall. Doors open at 5:30.
So, by extrapolation… GOP Presidential candidates should not debate on MSNBC and Democratic candidates should not debate on FOX News?
I expect any candidate who wants to represent me in government to be willing to speak to any crowd, so long as their personal safety is not an issue.
The Wyoming Freedom Caucus has made it clear that they are not interested in local issues and about true engagement with their actual constituents. The only campaign events they are interested in are Freedom Caucus “Conservative” rallies that are just “echo chambers” for their dogma. Look at their campaign literature, no mention of local or Wyoming specific issues, just parroting national Freedom Caucus themes. They don’t take their marching orders from Wyoming constituents, but from national based think tanks in Washington. Those are their priorities, not Wyoming and it’s issues. If that is what you want, then vote for the Freedom Caucus.
The Wyoming elected public officials and candidates who have snubbed some pre-election public debate participation are cluelessly ignoring the founding principles, and the men who articulated them, of true conservatism. It appears likely that the men and women who wish to deny universal public voice in preparation for the upcoming elections haven’t the slightest idea who these founding fathers even were let alone what they stood for. Edmund Burke, universally considered by clear-thinking students of politics and government as the philosophical father of modern conservatism, defined conservative thinking in late 18th Century England. John Adams, president of the United States 1797-1801, built on Burke’s principles to define American conservatism, and Russel Kirk and William F. Buckley fine-tuned the philosophy for 20th Century America. There were, of course, others but these most notable thinkers, all teachers of true democracy, are lamentably dead as is the conservatism of which they so convincingly wrote and spoke.
Twenty-first Century America has, most generally, seen the sharp demise of classical conservatism. Both Democrats and Republicans must own and share its death. Its remains are particularly oppressive in Wyoming with Utah and Idaho close on its heels but the stench is evident nation-wide. Denying participation in pre-election debates by any segment of the public flys in the face of everything we, as a democratic society, believe in — or perhaps once believed in. This is a shame, and we will likely be defined by it for years to come.
These candidates don’t want the public to hear answers given to questions in a public forum? Maybe it’s because they have no answers. Their only concern is how they can push a national level agenda, not serve the folks in their district or the people of Wyoming.
To be clear, Sarah Penn is not the House Representative for Lander, nor does she live in Lander. More accurately, she represents communities on the Wind River Reservation, Atlantic City, and South Pass City.
Sarah Penn lists her campaign as a Lander address with the Sec of State’s office plus her district DOES include a precinct in the “burbs” of Lander.
She represents me and I live just South of Lander. It’s a big diverse area.
Sounds like cancel culture to me (Freedom caucus style).
I congratulate the Fremont County League and county GOP organizations for working together to create an event to inform voters. An informed electorate is the foundation of our form of government. It’s where our government gets its authority, and we lose out when informed voices are missing.
Thanks to all.
Afraid of educated women?? Hey, this is the 21st century, get on board candidates. This is a goal we should all have, let’s not be afraid of those who have pursued a higher education. Overall most of them and this goal help our society and our country. If you’re afraid of tough questions i doubt i could vote for you. This is a complicated world, join the rest of us in WY who want more education not less!
Shades of Joe McCarthy. If it were me tasked with preparing the anti-Republican anti-conservative Enemies List for public censuring, the League of Women Voters would not be on it. Neither would Wyoming PBS . But here we are , in Freedom Caucus La-la Land.
My advice is to proceed with the debates and forums anyway , and just use cardboard cutouts of the obstinate candidates , on chairs alongside those candidates who do show up. It’s important they all be there , at least in spirit .
Cowardly. Entitled. Seeped in deep denial of their own superiority and correctness. These are not candidates; these are deluded cult members. But, hey, it’s probably who will win, because they reflect us.
Sad, but sooooo true…
I went to the Republican Forum at the Senior Center on July 9th and it was very impressive. I thought the questions were excellent. Fair. Balanced. The audience was able to ask as many questions as they wanted.
The Fremont County Republican ladies also made 4 kinds of homemade ice cream and other goodies, welcomed everyone and were polite and kind.
Lloyd Larson spoke and came to every table, shook hands and acknowledged that he realized not everyone agrees, but he works for the people of Wyoming.
That is who Fremont County is, and I am proud of it.
One step at a time, the Republican Party is chipping away at democracy. The GOP is gone. The Republican Party is an unfamiliar political group determined to create an authoritarian theocracy throughout the country. Heaven help us!
You are right. I don’t think this is our dads Republican party.
Seems pretty simple to me. The forum questions are from the Fremont County Republican Party, the format and rules were drafted with the help of the Fremont County Republican Party, if you are afraid to participate in a forum that is obviously a Republican Party forum, you are not a Republican, you are a RINO and do not deserve the vote of any Republican. Scott asked a very good question, “will they listen to us if elected?” The answer is no, they won’t, they only listen to their Beltway handlers who email or text them directions on every vote. It’s about time voters remind candidates that they represent us, not some dark money caucus.
Sounds like a good reason to not vote for these people. Maybe they are proponents of project 2025, in fact I would assume they are. That is very scary to me. Again, skip over them on the ballot. We all have a voice.
Vote them out of office. The three incumbents are real goofballs. Better yet, vote in some Democrats.
The Fremont County GOP wanted to kick Lander out of the county for submitting an application for renewable energy grants.
That’s the kind of idiocy mr. Harnsberger represents.
I commend Scott Harnsberger and Tara Berg for being willing to work with the league to ensure Wyoming voters to hear candidates in a non-factional setting
All I can say is that I recently tried to ask the following of candidates at a LWV forum in Albany County: who, in the candidates’ opinion, won the 2020 presidential election? The LWV person running the forum disallowed it. She characterized it as a gotcha question. I disagree, as it was designed to identify which candidates (Republican, Democrat, independent or Monster Raving Loony Party) had a relationship with reality. And who did not.
The attempt by the Albany County LVW to avoid even the appearance of bias suggests it is non-partisan, even if some positions of the national organization displease the “further right” wing of the GOP. LWV fora, some of them organized with one or both major parties, allow the public to learn what candidates believe, and to get some sense of their character.
And whether wrapping oneself in flag and bible is indeed the last refuge of a scoundrel..
I’m glad you asked the question. Every candidate running for office should answer. Are they afraid to admit if the do or don’t support our democracy?