Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, a Cody Republican and chair of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, will run for secretary of state, she announced Wednesday.
“I plan to continue the work I started in the Wyoming House to protect the integrity of our elections and build lasting trust with Wyoming voters,” Williams said in a press release.
Williams, who told WyoFile she is dropping Rodriguez from her name in the statewide race to “keep it simple,” is running for the office now held by Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who announced in December he will seek Wyoming’s lone seat in the U.S. House.
As Wyoming’s second-highest executive officer behind the governor, the secretary of state’s main responsibilities include overseeing elections, and registering and authorizing businesses operating in the state. The secretary also serves on the State Board of Land Commissioners, State Building Commission, State Loan and Investment Board and as the chair of the State Canvassing Board.
“Williams pledged to keep the Cowboy State ‘open for business’ by aggressively reducing red tape, streamlining processes, and preserving one of the nation’s lowest tax burdens,” her press release stated.
She is the third candidate to announce plans to run for secretary of state, joining Converse County Commissioner and Republican Robert Short as well as Worland resident and Democrat Bryan McCarty in the race.
In 2012, Williams graduated from Alabama-based, online Columbia Southern University with a Master’s degree in criminal justice administration. She moved to Wyoming after working for seven years as a law enforcement officer in Marin County, California.
In Park County, Williams has co-owned a garage door business with her husband, held positions at Mountain Spirit Habitat for Humanity and Serenity Pregnancy Resource Center. Williams and her husband, Chris, have two children and one grandchild.
Voters first elected Williams to House District 50 in 2020, a position in which “she has established herself as a fearless champion for conservative principles,” her press release states. She currently chairs the House Labor, Health and Social Services Committee.
As a lawmaker, Williams has been a staunch opponent of abortion, sponsoring measures in each session throughout her legislative tenure aimed at either restricting or altogether prohibiting abortion in Wyoming. She was the lead sponsor of 2023 legislation that sought to enact a near-total ban on abortion. In January, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled that it and a second ban violated the Wyoming Constitution’s protection of an individual’s right to make their own health care decisions.
This year, Williams co-sponsored a partial ban now facing a separate legal challenge. She also brought an unsuccessful amendment to the budget to withhold about $3.6 million earmarked for security improvements at courthouses across the state.
“If this branch of government has a vested interest in protecting your life, why does it suddenly lose that interest when the life in question comes to the unborn?” Williams said on the floor.
The amendment failed in a 48-12 vote.
In 2025, Williams turned more of her attention to Wyoming’s election administration, partly leading the charge of lawmakers scrutinizing Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock for her conduct in the 2024 election.
After Hadlock did not appear at a September committee meeting, to which she had been subpoenaed, Williams told WyoFile that lawmakers would pursue criminal charges. That case is ongoing.
On her website, Williams voiced her support for prohibiting ballot harvesting, or the gathering of ballots for the purpose of delivery — a measure Secretary Gray has championed during his time as chief elections officer.
“This common-sense measure would have capped the number of ballots any single individual could collect and deposit for counting at 5, removing the financial incentive for large-scale, organized collection efforts while still allowing limited assistance from family, caregivers, or neighbors,” Williams said on her website.
As chair of the Freedom Caucus, Williams has pushed back on criticisms the group of House Republicans has received for its organizing strategies that include vote recommendations sent to its members.
“The bottom line is this: vote recommendations only became a problem when conservatives got organized and successful,” Williams wrote in a May 2025 opinion piece. “Like all the other parroting attacks on the Freedom Caucus, this latest round of complaints is just another tactic from the left, and Republicans who collaborate with them, to hide their deep and unpopular disdain for the policies and freedom we stand for.”
The official candidate filing period in Wyoming does not open until May 14.
For more legislative coverage, click here.
It’s hard to imagine a worse SOS than Chuck Gray. But if RRW gets elected, she won’t be in the legislature, and won’t be getting up in women’s uteruses with her transvaginal wand. Surely that’s a plus? Meanwhile Rep. Neiman shouldn’t have a say in anything gynecological. He doesn’t have a uterus.
Williams was one of just a few legislators to vote against the public lands bill that recently passed. She also supported efforts by Utah to sue the federal government to give BLM lands to the state, though she said that National Parks, Forest Service and BLM should all be given back to the states. Wyoming has mismanaged their state lands, sold over 20% of them, does not allow camping except in state parks, over charges for grazing leases. She needs to be voted out of public office, not in. She moved here in around 2015 and ran for office and was voted in in 2020. Another outsider who wasn’t here for hardly any time that wants to change the culture of Wyoming.
What a political strategy! You create doubt in the most extraordinarily secure voting system in the world, plant seeds of distrust in the honest and hard working state employees and volunteers who make the voting system’s second to none and then you run on fixing the problem that never existed in the first place. Begging for a return to decorum, integrity, truth, manners, reality and common sense. Give us candidates that have a full enough and happy life so they stop trying to ruin all of ours
If she wanted to simplify her name, why not Rachel Rodriguez. She must have tried the WASPY sounding name on some focus groups, and whala…
Cares less about the thoughts and needs of her HD 50 constituents – check. Throws her gender under the bus – got it. Cancels her middle Hispanic name to hide her ethnicity – what? Ms. “Williams” is a sell out any way you deal with her and if she thinks that lil’ Chucky Gray’s Secretary office is going to be hers, well, probably not. She does have one super secret political weapon whispering in her ear, Rachel’s back yard mother in law’s house tenant, the $9.99 blue light special cowboy hat himself, Missouri carpetbagger Tim Lasseter. A Vegas standup comedian couldn’t handle all these joke lines emitting out of Cody
Chuck Gray in a skirt. We don’t need her or any of her Freedumb Party followers.
Great, another ideologue who knows nothing about the office
I think that the Artist formerly known as Rodriquez is going to have a tough row to hoe. She doesn’t have a Chuckie Gray daddy to foot the campaign bill and the voting public ain’t fooled by the dropping of the Rod name. Can’t forget to mention the putrid stench of her association with the NonFreedom Caucus and her heroes such as Benito Bear and Con Man Chipster Neiman, an odor so immense that can’t be washed off
What’s with the sudden pipeline from California to the Wyoming Secretary of State Office? We probably need one of our County Clerks to step up for the office
and demonstrate that we already have free and fair elections run by our counties.
Rachel, Rachel, Rachel, You’re not in California anymore. People in Wyoming will remember your name AND actions no matter how you change it. It’s still Rachel “Freedumb Caucus” Rodriguez.
If Wyoming chooses to elect her we’ll just have another Chuck Gray, but this time with long hair and a hyphenated name. This state can do a lot better than this.
The Wyoming way is not vindictiveness
This year, Williams co-sponsored a partial ban now facing a separate legal challenge. She also brought an unsuccessful amendment to the budget to withhold about $3.6 million earmarked for security improvements at courthouses across the state.
“If this branch of government has a vested interest in protecting your life, why does it suddenly lose that interest when the life in question comes to the unborn?” Williams said on the floor.
There is now a primary in the Republican Party for sos.
A thankless job.
Just ask chuck gray.
Wyoming let’s make sure this ideologue is in our rearview mirror!
We do not need another culture warrior in charge of our election system! Imagine a Secretary of State committed to increasing voter registration and participation (especially in primaries) and who fights to keep our confidential voting information confidential instead of earning Trump brownie points by making it harder to vote and shipping our confidential data off to Pam Bondi to do heaven’s knows what.
Right On!
We do not need another culture warrior in charge of our election system! Imagine a Secretary of State committed to increasing voter registration and participation (especially in primaries) and who fights to keep our confidential voting information confidential instead of earning Trump ubrownie points by making it harder to vote and shipping our confidential data off to Pam Bondi to do heaven’s knows what.
Wyoming voters!! I sure hope that you have had enough of the unfreedumb caucus. We have a chance to move a little closer to center, and a better outcome for our future.
Hey, Rachel—tell us why you really dropped Rodriguez from your name . Afraid your MAGA constituency would have issues with implied Hispanicity ?
Uhm, Dewey. I don’t know what you’re looking at. But its incorrect.
House District 50: Representative Rachel Rodriguez-Williams
https://www.wyoleg.gov/Legislators/2021/H/2083
Chad- please don’t do my thinking for me. It’s way above your intellectual pay grade.
My thought EXACTLY!!!
Dropping the rodriguez from her name won’t change her voting record or let her hide from the idiocy that she supports.
What’s the deal with all the clowns in Cody?
Clowns? Clowns in Cody and surrounding area? We’ve got’em, that’s for sure, Rachel W fka RR-W, Nina Webber, Tim French, Dan Laursen and Paul Hoeft. Reaching a little bit further south we also present you the brain trust John Winter. The circus is in town!!!
It is truly exhausting to try and chronicle every crazy move the Freedom caucus makes. This last legislative session should be the best indicator of their retrograde,white Christian nationalist efforts. Rachel denies it but we all know they(FC) are being given their marching orders from out of state along with money too. The level of craven idiocy was on full display.
No way for Secretary of State!!!!
She’ll still have an R after her name Chuck. And in all but Teton County, that usually seals the deal in Wyoming.
Wyoming Voters please look back on this past year and the Freedom Caucus crappy voting record that does nothing good for the state and the people of Wyoming! We need to dump the Freedom Caucus come back to center and civility!!!!!