Wyoming’s secretary of state post has risen in prominence in recent years as worries about election integrity and shady corporations have intensified. This year, four Republican candidates are vying for the post, the state’s second-highest executive office behind the governor. Whoever wins the Republican primary race on Aug. 18 will face the lone Democratic candidate, Bryan McCarty, in November’s general election.
The secretary of state’s main responsibilities include overseeing elections and registering and authorizing businesses 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. Current Secretary of State Chuck Gray announced in December that he will seek Wyoming’s lone seat in the U.S. House.
This will be Qwenton Eagle Oviatt’s first run for a political office. Democrat McCarty ran for U.S. House in 2022, but otherwise is also pretty new to politics.
The rest of the field has held public offices or campaigned previously. CJ Young, a Cheyenne Republican and former field representative for U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman, ran for the Wyoming House in 2014. Converse County Commissioner Robert Short, a Douglas Republican, ran for U.S. Senate in 2020, coming in second in the Republican primary behind current U.S. Sen. Cynthia Lummis. And Rep. Rachel Williams, a Cody Republican, has served in the Wyoming House since 2021 and chairs the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
C.J. Young | Republican, Cheyenne
Website: cjyoungforwyoming.com, CJ Young For Wyoming
During his two years as the Elections Division director in Secretary of State Gray’s office, Young had “a lot of thoughts and ideas” about potential improvements and how to “work with folks in the community and the county clerks a little better.” As he saw candidates announcing their campaigns for secretary of state, he thought to himself: “You know what, I worked there, I know how it works, I know what it needs, I know how to make it better, and so why not stand up and take a chance and go ahead and run for it?”
Young grew up in Carbon County and graduated in 2014 from the University of Wyoming with a law degree and master’s in public administration. That same year, he ran for a seat in the Wyoming House of Representatives, losing to Democrat Charles Pelkey.
Young worked as the policy planning manager for the Wyoming Department of Corrections before joining Gray’s office in 2023. He left that post in 2025 to work as a field representative for U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman. Because of House ethics rules, Young had to leave that position at the end of May to run for secretary of state, he said. “I talked to Congresswoman Hageman, and she was encouraging and supportive of me running for this, so I decided to leave.” Outside of campaigning, Young serves as a U.S. Navy Reserve Officer.
If elected, Young said he would prioritize building positive relationships with county clerks and elected officials, particularly with those in the executive branch, which has experienced heightened tensions and infighting in recent years.
Young also would advocate for two new positions at the Secretary of State’s Office — one for a professional trainer who could help new staff and clerks learn the ropes of running elections, and another for a professional investigator. In addition, Young envisions providing staff with updated software. The office, he said, “has some wonderful staff in it that really care and work hard, but they’re lacking some of the tools.”
As someone with a military background, Young said he has “a lot of passion” to make sure that the votes of military personnel abroad count. He also wants to do more to support veteran-owned businesses.
Qwenton Eagle Oviatt | Republican, Lander
Website: oviatt4wyoming.com
This is the first time Oviatt, a Lander Republican, has run for political office or been involved in Republican politics. “My wife told me that I … needed to quit complaining about our elected officials to her if I wasn’t gonna do something about it,” Oviatt said. “So I just was kind of like, ‘All right, you know what, here we go, I’m doing something about it.’”
Oviatt went to high school in Lander and graduated from the University of Wyoming with bachelor’s degrees in psychology and environment and natural resource management. After college, he worked stints in Antarctica supporting scientists. He later became an entrepreneur, founding his own contracting and painting firm and another company with his father that manufactured flare stacks and waste gas burners.
Currently, Oviatt is an academic advisor at Central Wyoming College, where he works with young people who he said seem disengaged from voting and the political process. Seeing this lack of engagement, he said, “was kind of heartbreaking.” He hopes that his campaign will “motivate some of them to go register and vote.”
“Even if they’re not going to vote for me, I’d rather them go out and do their civic duty and vote for somebody else,” Oviatt said. As secretary of state, he would prioritize voter education.
Oviatt is also concerned about shady LLC filings in Wyoming and would make addressing this a priority. “Something needs to be done on that immediately,” he said. He envisions having a small group in the office dedicated to looking into LLCs and enforcing rules.
Oviatt said infighting is also a problem that he wants to address. “There’s just so much, so much infighting, not just political, but personal as well, and I think that that’s a waste of time,” Oviatt said. With his certification in mediation from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Oviatt said he feels equipped to build positive relationships.
Rachel Williams | Republican, Cody
Website: williams4wyoming.com, Rachel Williams for Secretary of State
Williams has represented Park County in the Wyoming House since 2021. She currently chairs the House Labor, Health and Social Services Committee and also leads the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.
Williams didn’t respond to WyoFile’s inquiries by publishing time.
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, she has co-owned a garage door business with her husband and worked at Mountain Spirit Habitat for Humanity and Serenity Pregnancy Resource Center.
Williams has drawn headlines as the main sponsor of two major anti-abortion bills, both of which were struck down in court. In 2025, she helped lead the charge by lawmakers to scrutinize and pursue criminal charges against Weston County Clerk Becky Hadlock for her conduct in the 2024 election.
On her website, Williams said she supports barring “ballot harvesting” — gathering and submitting absentee or mail-in voter ballots — a ban that current Secretary of State Gray has championed.
Robert Short | Republican, Douglas
Website: shortforstate.com, Short for State
It didn’t initially cross the Douglas Republican’s mind that running for secretary of state could be in the cards. “This was not on my bucket list,” Short said. “Honestly, I was preparing to spend a whole lot more time on a beach in Greece and Costa Rica.”
But, he added, “the reality is bad people do bad things, good people do nothing.”
“If I choose to do nothing, then I should not be surprised if things happen that I’m not happy about.”
Short grew up in Glenrock and studied electrical engineering and computer science. An entrepreneur who has worked around the world, Short has built and owned businesses across the energy, agriculture, retail and tourism sectors. He moved with his family to Douglas in 2005.
Short first served as a Converse County commissioner in 2014 and has also been the vice president of the Wyoming County Commissioners Association.
Having been an election judge multiple times, Short said he “really understands what an election looks like from start to finish.” This coupled with his experience as a county commissioner puts him in a “unique position to be a great partner for our county clerks” and will allow him to bring “a voice of sanity” around Wyoming elections, Short said.
“We’ve heard a lot about election integrity, and there’s a supposition, almost an indictment, of wrongdoing, or illicit activity, or nefarious behaviors, or whatever, something untoward in elections in Wyoming, and that’s simply not the case.”
Short also would prioritize financial education. He stressed that the office “is supposed to help educate folks in financial fraud, especially because we’ve seen seniors being completely taken advantage of, unfortunately, through the blue screen rectangle that you’re holding on to.”
Bryan McCarty | Democrat, Worland
Website: Bryan McCarty For Secretary of State
When McCarty ran for Wyoming’s U.S. House seat in 2022, there wasn’t a single Democratic candidate running for secretary of state.
“If I had been able to find out from the party that was the situation I might have run for secretary of state instead of Congress,” McCarty said. “We’ve just got to show up. So many Republicans are running unopposed. We can’t just hand it to them.”
The lone Democrat in this year’s secretary of state race, he wanted to make sure the party “had someone on the ballot.”
McCarty studied marketing with a minor in engineering and applied math at Oregon State University. His career has revolved around the railroad industry. His experience includes working as an internal auditor for a multi-billion-dollar business and investigating train derailments, according to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle.
McCarty, who’s originally from Missouri, moved to Worland in 2019 to care for his brother. He’s a Democratic precinct committee person for his ward and a regular at county party meetings.
As secretary of state, McCarty said he would “master what the formal requirements of the position are and administer those as they are written.”
He would also focus on preserving public lands. Though the secretary of state doesn’t directly manage public lands, the officer sits on the State Board of Land Commissioners and the State Loan and Investment Board, which manage trust assets and permanent land funds.
“Public lands is such a pervasive and hot button issue to so many people in this state, and it really is the single issue that ties everything together for Wyoming, whether it’s politics or the economy or our culture,” McCarty said.
“I’m definitely on the side of ‘Public lands need to stay in public hands.’”
