Plenty of jack

In the summer of 2018, Foster Friess stepped off his private plane onto the blistering tarmac at the Casper/Natrona County International Airport. He had come that day to attend a meet-and-greet for gubernatorial candidates. My office hosted the event. Friess was a political newcomer and a last-minute entry into the race for governor. 

An ultrawealthy businessman and Republican megadonor from Teton County, Friess had spent a lifetime growing his investment firm, ultimately managing more than $15.7 billion in assets. Now, at the age of 78, he was seeking Wyoming’s shiniest acquisition: the governor’s office. 

Outside of Teton County, he was an unknown, a stranger in a foreign land. Indeed, he told those gathered that day — part boast, part confession — that he had never been to Casper.

An uncomfortable chuckle followed. Natrona County is the second-largest voting block in the state. And yet. 

While the serious gubernatorial candidates had been in the trenches for years, serving on school boards, county commissions, working both sides of a paycheck, Foster’s pop-up campaign was friess-dried into 16 weeks, and hammered voters with mailers and media spots.  

I remember Foster’s entourage, young men in their shiny, slim-cut suits. I knew them to be not one of us. Only East Coast elites present with a sheen to their jib. Yet here they were, populating our towns that summer, stationed at the busiest intersections, pumping Friess campaign signs like barkers enticing us to an exotic carnival of the richest 1%. 

“He’s got plenty of jack and he’s using every cent of it,” the late Sen. Alan Simpson told Politico at the time, “we’ll see if you can really buy a governor’s race.”

Foster Friess came pretty doggone close. We didn’t know him and, by his own admission, he was a stranger to us. Yet, in a blip, he spent more money than any candidate in the field, over $1.1 million. On Election Day, he came in second place to Mark Gordon. He also beat a lawyer from Goshen County with deep roots in the state named Harriet.  

Eight years later, Foster’s son, Steve Friess, is running for the GOP U.S. House seat and using the same playbook. This time, he’s got even more jack, with $2.2 million in his campaign fund, doubling his father’s effort. 

Will we fall for Friess 2.0? A recent FEC report showed that four of the six candidates in the Congressional race who reported their funding — Friess, Reid Rasner, Chuck Gray and Frank Chapman (who has since dropped out) — have contributed more than $1 million of their own funds. Contrast that with the campaigns of the other three candidates in the FEC database — Jillian Balow, Bo Biteman, and David Giralt — whose collective funding was overwhelmingly from individual contributors.

The primary is less than three weeks away. Given the crowded field, it does not take much to win a seat with a small percentage of the votes, and you can bet the wagons be ‘a circling. Depending on who you believe, Chuck Gray is leading in the polls, though his pollster’s math is fuzzy and the methodology questionable. 

Friess has spent more than the combined campaign funds of Balow, Giralt, and Biteman. Consequently, he may rise to the top not because we like him (heck, do we even know him?) but because he has the bread to beat Gray.

FEC reports show Friess has spent $1.5 million on mailers. His mailers are a constant, buggy presence in our home, like stealthy boxelders attracted to houses with western exposure. It is relentless and difficult to ignore.

I don’t know about you, but we receive a Friess mailer almost every week, sometimes twice in the same week. A typical mailer sent to all registered Wyoming voters costs approximately $75,000. According to the 2025 U.S. Census, the median annual household income in Wyoming is $76,176.  That’s a year’s worth of wages on our countertop. Every week. Headed for the trash.

How can our state’s favorite sons and daughters compete with that? How is it that our choices for the highest offices in our state are the candidates who capture our attention simply through their checkbook? 

The mailers keep coming. We may hate them. But the name sticks, the pledges and promises, enticing. We become candidate curious.  

Do they know us? Who has knocked on your door? Who have you met eyeball to eyeball? For those self-funders hovering over the masses, running shallow campaigns light on details and heavy on ego, is this campaign in the best interests of Wyoming or for the candidate, party of one?

Convince us you’re a man of the people (why the men, always men). Do the moneyed know the cost of a gallon of milk? Do they know the price of a gallon of gas?? 

Perhaps it is naïve to lament the era of those dreamy, clear-eyed political hopefuls, those workaday chumps like the rest of us, who ran for office, not on the grease of their bank accounts or family wealth, but on the quality of their character and thoughtful plan for our future. 

Search thyself, my beloved Cowboy State: Are we suckers or sages?  

Foster Friess was a sleeper candidate who almost became our Executive in Chief. This time, it’s on us. Do your homework, ask the most civically engaged person you know and get their thoughts. Call the candidate. You’ll know if they are the stuff of the high plains if they call back. Wyoming folk return calls. Don’t be driven by cheap, fear-baiting images of hairy-bellied, middle-aged men on the pitch stalking your daughters, but because a candidate aligns with your values and belief system.

Straighten the spine, exercise one of the greatest freedoms in this country and head to the polls on Aug. 18. 

It’s time to arise.

Susan Stubson serves on WyoFile’s board of directors. Neither she, nor any other member of the board, has the authority to direct or determine coverage. —Ed.