What should Wyoming’s ‘ABC’ voters do?

In August, Chuck Gray won the Republican nomination for Congress with only 25% of the vote. Roughly three of every four Wyoming Republicans who voted chose someone else, and not one of the eight Republicans he defeated has publicly endorsed him. Those voters had good reason to reject Gray. They, and others, should follow their good judgment again in November.

Gray’s partisan posturing offends most Wyomingites, but his performance as Wyoming’s chief election officer is what disqualifies him from becoming our sole representative in the U.S. House. Though voter fraud is virtually nonexistent in Wyoming, he and his Freedom Caucus friends have relentlessly trotted out that fictional bogeyman to advance partisan “election integrity” laws that do nothing but erode our most sacred right as citizens — to cast our votes in open elections free of unnecessary government conditions.

Gray made it harder for Wyoming citizens to vote.

Peddling MAGA election conspiracies, Gray pushed measures that have made Wyoming’s election code the most restrictive in the nation. We are now one of only six states requiring voters not only to show photo identification, which is reasonable, but also to prove their citizenship with paperwork many folks don’t have and can’t easily get, effectively disenfranchising them. Gray and his crowd also took away the popular freedom we had enjoyed since 1911: changing our party affiliation up to Election Day so we could make fully informed choices about which primary to vote in.

None of these laws addressed a real problem. Modern Wyoming elections have been honest and well run by our fine county clerks, and Republicans have almost always dominated regardless of any so-called “crossover” voting. But thanks to Gray and the Freedom Caucus, fewer of us can now vote, our freedom to choose our primary has been curtailed, and our voter registration, turnout and electoral competition are an embarrassment.

Gray handed our private information to the feds.

Unlike our neighboring Republican secretaries of state, Gray rushed to be the first in the nation to turn over the voter records of roughly 280,000 Wyoming citizens, including driver’s license numbers, to the Department of Justice. Our election code forbids disclosing that confidential information. No court ordered Gray to do it, and 26 federal courts have since found the federal demand unlawful. Fremont County Clerk Julie Freese, a Republican with three decades of experience, noted that state law bars clerks from giving anyone’s private information to anyone, yet our election chief handed it over without a written agreement and without telling anyone. Our clerks and voters were angry, Freese said, and she doesn’t blame them. Wyoming people are rightly suspicious of federal overreach, yet Gray opened our file cabinet to Washington anyway.

Gray turned a blind eye to federal agents intimidating our election officials.

On primary day, Justice Department agents showed up unannounced at Laramie County polling places, approaching poll workers and saying they intended to interview voters. Gray’s office had advance notice from the feds but kept it to itself, catching Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee off guard. 

“This was a poorly managed exercise and one that showed complete disregard for our state laws and administration of our elections,” Lee said. Gov. Mark Gordon called the federal conduct “aggressive” and asked for an investigation. Again, Gray — our top election official — did nothing to protect Wyoming voters or county officials.

Plainly, Chuck Gray does not deserve the support of anyone who values the right to vote and a healthy Wyoming democracy.

So, what should all the Republican “anyone but Chuck” (ABC) voters do? If we split our votes as we did in the primary, Gray wins with a minority again. This time we must unite behind a candidate from a different party who can beat him.

Crossing party lines occasionally to vote for the right person is a Wyoming tradition, not a betrayal. Republicans in Kansas and other states are doing that in numbers right now. Not so long ago, we elected Democrats Ed Herschler, Mike Sullivan and Dave Freudenthal as governor for a combined 28 years. We judged the person, not the party label, and Wyoming was well served. Since then, steadily growing one-party control has made Wyoming government more extreme and less accountable.

This November, let’s build on the encouraging wave we saw in the primary. Don’t reward a MAGA extremist like Gray just because he is the only Republican on the ballot. Your Republican friends won’t even need to know you strayed, just for a moment, from the pack.