Cheyenne House Race: Candidates Say Opponents Way Out Of Touch With Voters

In politics, the past isn’t always the past — it can come back to haunt you.

Mudslinging has escalated in the Cheyenne House District 11 race for the Wyoming Legislature between former Democratic state legislator Sara Burlingame and Republican challenger Jacob Wasserburger.

Both candidates are dredging up some old dirt from each other’s past in the final stretch before the Nov. 5 general election.

A mailer sent out on Wasserburger’s behalf shows a photo of Burlingame standing with President Joe Biden.

The Burlingame campaign responded with a mailer featuring an image taken from one of Wasserburger’s old YouTube videos where he allegedly made bizarre remarks about the matrix, shirtless while wearing sunglasses, a top hat.

“We absolutely cannot afford to send someone to do a serious job who doesn’t live in the real world,” Burlingame told Cowboy State Daily.

Wasserburger Aims First

A group working on behalf of Wasserburger took the first swing.

Wasserburger declined to comment for this story, but said he’d “rather let the voters decide” what they think about the mailers. He told Cowboy State Daily earlier this month he wanted to run a clean campaign and not directly criticize Burlingame.

In a political mailer put out by the Wyoming Freedom political action committee, the campaign arm of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, the PAC attacked Burlingame on a variety of topics and included a photo of her standing next to then-Vice President Joe Biden during former President Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.

“Make no mistake, if elected, Sara Burlingame would import the radical Harris Walz agenda to Wyoming, and special interest groups would be lined up outside her door in the Capitol,” the mailer reads in reference to Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

It’s unclear which door the mailer refers to as only legislators in leadership positions get their own office at the Capitol.

Burlingame is the executive director of LGBTQ advocacy organization Wyoming Equality. She served in the Legislature from 2019-2021 before losing her reelection bid. The mailer claims Burlingame lost her second attempt at reelection in 2022 “because of her radical beliefs.”

It also argues her sole focus is LGBTQ advocacy and that she never brought or supported a bill attempting to bring property tax relief during her time in office. Burlingame did, however, vote to support various bills bringing property tax exemptions for the elderly, disabled and veterans during that time.

The mailer also mentions how Wyoming Equality has received more than $750,000 in grants from the Wyoming Department of Health over the past five years.

In September, Burlingame told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle her organization was seeking legal counsel for a possible claim of defamation related to some of the comments the Freedom Caucus made at the time related to this topic, calling Wyoming Equality “a radical leftwing organization that shills for surgical abuse of children, porn in libraries, and worse.”

The mailer claims Burlingame’s legal threat as a response to being questioned about how taxpayer money was spent.

‘Matrix Destroyer’

After this mailer went out, Burlingame shot back with a mailer of her own, bringing up the YouTube video Wasserburger made sometime in what she estimates was the last five years.

In the since-deleted video, the mailer quotes Wasserburger as having said, “This is what I wear when I leave the vortex and destroy the matrix.”

There’s a screenshot from the video of a Wasserburger in a top hat and wearing sunglasses.

Burlingame said most of the deleted videos on Wasserburger’s business page were centered around giving advice on vitamins and cryptocurrency. Deleting the videos, she said, shows he has something to hide.

“House 11 voters are right to want to know who Jacob is,” Burlingame told Cowboy State Daily. “He has since deleted his former business page because it tells the truth: he has ideas that are out of step with Wyoming and House 11 voters.”

The mailer questions, “Who is Jacob ‘The MATRIX DESTROYER’ Wasserburger?”

It then proceeds to answer its own question, accusing Wasserburger of supporting robots and artificial intelligence taking jobs, and having citizens pay for roads, schools and emergency services out of pocket, “which will be expensive and unpredictable.”

“Jacob Wasserberger (sic) is out of touch with working people and doesn’t understand the serious struggles of families and retirees on fixed incomes in Cheyenne,” the mailer reads.

The mailer also accuses Wasserburger of hiding his affiliations and lying.

Wasserburger denied to Cowboy State Daily earlier this month that he’s involved with the Freedom Caucus in any way. Although the group didn’t endorse his Republican primary campaign, it did send out the campaign mailers on his behalf.

“This is in line with his public distance from the Freedom Caucus — if he believes in their views he should claim them,” Burlingame said. “I’m the same in every room and I take the prosperity and growth of Cheyenne very seriously.”

Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.