Editor's note:
This story was jointly reported and authored by the Gillette News Record, Green River Star, Oil City News, The Sheridan Press, Wyoming Tribune Eagle and WyoFile. Reporting was coordinated and compiled by WyoFile, with editing from all participating publications.
A growing controversy around a conservative activist handing out $1,500 checks on the House floor has dominated the legislative session now underway in Cheyenne. The blowback isn’t confined to Wyoming’s Capitol.
The checks originated with a Jackson donor, but were handed out by Rebecca Bextel, a Jackson woman who’s been advocating for legislation that would end housing mitigation fees that fund affordable and workforce housing in places like Teton County. They were intended for 10 lawmakers, at least some of whom received them at the Capitol.
Interviews with people in the communities represented by the 10 lawmakers suggested the controversy is receiving plenty of attention outside of Cheyenne.
“Checkgate is alive and well,” rancher Rob Hendry said this week. “The whole state’s talking about it.”
The handoff struck Hendry, Natrona County GOP chairman and former county commission chairman, as exceptionally bad political form and unprecedented in his experience. Likewise, elected officials and political leaders from across the state criticized the location and timing of the campaign contributions while lauding efforts to investigate.
Since news broke last week that Bextel, a GOP fundraiser and state committeewoman for the Teton County Republican Party, distributed the donations to lawmakers on the House floor, the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office has opened a criminal inquiry into whether the checks amounted to bribery. Gov. Mark Gordon on Tuesday issued an executive order that bans campaign contributions in state buildings.
Wyoming Republican Party Chair Bryan Miller said Bextel was not representing the party while handing out checks on the House floor, and, as such, the incident falls outside the party’s jurisdiction.
“Regardless, the alleged act of handing out checks on the floor during a session, even after hours, needs to be investigated by relevant authorities to determine appropriateness,” Miller wrote in an email.
The location
Hendry has been traveling to Cheyenne to engage with the Legislature since the 1980s. He has rarely seen a member of the general public out on the House floor interacting with lawmakers.
“You’re out there in the lobby,” Hendry said. “You’d send a note in to them, and they choose to go out and talk to you. Ordinary citizens just don’t go on to the floor like that.”
Don Grasso, a Teton County donor, told a Jackson Hole News&Guide reporter Friday he’d written $1,500 checks to 10 Republicans before handing them over to Bextel.
The checks were intended for: House Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hulett; Reps. Marlene Brady, R-Green River; Gary Brown, R-Cheyenne; John Bear and Christopher Knapp, R-Gillette; Tony Locke, R-Casper; Darin McCann, R-Rock Springs; and Joe Webb, R-Lyman; as well as Sen. Bob Ide, R-Casper. Former Sheridan lawmaker Mark Jennings was also on Grasso’s list. Each of the 10 Republicans has a tie to the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
McCann and Webb have acknowledged receiving checks. A photograph of the exchange, taken by Laramie Democratic Rep. Karlee Provenza and now widely circulated, shows Bextel handing a check to McCann with Brady in the background. McCann confirmed to a reporter last week that Bextel had given him a campaign donation check from another donor. He also said, “No one’s ever told me how to vote. Ever.”
Bear, the former head of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and chairman of one of the Legislature’s most powerful committees, told a reporter Monday that he, too, had accepted a check. But Bear said he did not accept the check on the House floor.
Jennings said he is not aware of any rule or law Bextel violated in handing out checks on the House floor. The longtime lawmaker said he had not received Grasso’s check as of Monday evening.
“I don’t know about a check,” Jennings said. “I only heard rumors about that through the papers.”
It’s not known if others received checks or whether any were distributed on the House floor. In the photo, Brady is holding what appears to be a check, but she didn’t directly answer questions about what it was.
‘An absolute stain’
When asked by the Green River Star about the checks given out at the Legislature, Brady replied “no comment.”
Sweetwater County Commissioner Taylor Jones, however, did not hold back during the county commissioners regular meeting this week.
“I will say as a Sweetwater County citizen and a commissioner, and yes I can do both at the same time,” he said, referring to a previous confrontation between commissioners and Brady where she claimed to only be speaking as a citizen and not a representative, “I’m terribly embarrassed by how some of our local legislators have acted recently regarding money received on the House floor.”
The incident hits close to home for the Republican, who is married to state Sen. Stacy Jones, R-Rock Springs. Taylor Jones stressed that while not everyone knows the rules for how things are done in the Capitol, and a regular person could make a mistake, legislators are trained on how things work and should know the ethics of how to handle situations.
Echoing reactions from around the state, he said, “This is an absolute stain on Wyoming, the Legislature, and actually our county as well.”
Brady narrowly defeated Tony Niemiec in the 2024 Republican primary. Niemiec is now chairman of the Sweetwater County Republican Party and issued a statement in that role.
“We fully respect the work of the Wyoming House Select Committee and the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office, and it is important that their investigations be allowed to proceed without interference or premature conclusions,” the statement read. “At the same time, our party holds its elected officials to a high standard of ethical conduct. The receipt of campaign donations on the House floor raises legitimate concerns and falls short of the separation the public expects between legislative business and campaign activity.”
GOP party chairs in Sheridan and Laramie counties declined to comment for this story.
The timing
Former Sweetwater County Rep. Stan Blake, a Democrat who served in the Legislature for 14 years, stressed how unusual the situation is.
“In all my years in the Legislature, I never saw anybody offer campaign checks,” Blake said, questioning how Bextel gained access to the floor since “you need to be invited.”
He also defended Provenza’s decision to document the moment.
“I would have done the same thing, I would have taken a picture of it,” Blake said. “To me, it looks bad. It looks horribly bad.”
“It just doesn’t look good for them to hand you some money and you haven’t even put your name in to run.”
Rob Hendry
Blake, Hendry and Miller all questioned the timing of the donations because people haven’t yet filed to run for office or formally announced their candidacies. The filing period is in May, although candidates sometimes announce ahead of that period. Political parties are prohibited from providing financial support for candidates until after the primary election in August, the state GOP’s Miller explained.
“It just doesn’t look good for them to hand you some money and you haven’t even put your name in to run,” Hendry said.
In his experience, candidates are fastidious about having campaign contributions sent to a campaign manager, secretary or other entity.
“I’ve tried to hand them a check at a campaign party after they’ve announced. They didn’t take it,” Hendry said. “They said send it to this address or the campaign office. Not to the person.”
People back home
For one constituent from a county where two lawmakers were intended to receive checks, the incident made a pattern she’d already been tracking more visible to the rest of the state.
Jenny Sorenson is a Gillette resident, former educator and parent who has children in high school and at the University of Wyoming. She has been highly critical of the Freedom Caucus in the past.
In early February, she wrote a letter to the editor that questioned Bear’s connection to Bextel. Sorenson brought up an amendment that Bear made to Senate File 40 last year, targeting Jackson’s affordable housing efforts. Bextel is a longtime critic of Jackson and Teton County policies, including mitigation rates that charge developers to fund affordable housing.
While Rep. Ken Clouston, R-Gillette, and Sen. Eric Barlow, R-Gillette, were working to come up with a way to get funding for a new Campbell County High School in 2025, Bear was working on the amendment targeting Teton County, Sorenson said. Sorenson’s letter questioning Bear’s priorities and connection to Bextel published in the Gillette News Record just as the news and image of the check being passed out on the House floor became public. Sorenson felt validated.
Although Bextel and Grasso are Wyoming residents, Sorenson sees them as donors trying to shape Wyoming into their own image: “One that is more friendly to millionaire and billionaire investors than the working people who are keeping the lights on and plowing the roads and feeding our kids and taking care of our communities.”
And right now, Sorenson said, that side is winning, with issues such as slashing or eliminating property taxes and “irrational cuts” to the state budget gaining traction among lawmakers and voters alike.
“They’re winning because they have the money to create the marketing and propaganda to convince citizens they don’t need basic services like EMS or firefighters or even public education,” she said.
Lawmakers are showing where their allegiances lie based on their votes, she added, catering more to “Teton County donors than to their own constituents,” and it’s hurting the people back home.
As for the investigations now underway, Sorenson remains “skeptical.”
“I’m really worried that they’re going to create so much smoke,” she said, “we’re not really going to get to the bottom of it.”
