Wyoming Closer To Separate Primaries, Run-Offs For Top Offices, Including Gov.

House Speaker Chip Neiman, R-Hulett, has been trying to get runoff elections in Wyoming for four years. On Wednesday, he got a small victory toward that effort when the Senate Corporations, Elections and Subdivisions Committee passed his House Bill 249 on a 4-1 vote. 

HB 249 would bump the primary election to May for all the statewide races, including governor. 

If no candidate for any race in the May partisan primary gets more than 50% of the vote, then the top two candidates from that race would advance to an August primary runoff, where they would square off against each other.

“I believe that we need to have the ability to make sure that the folks are representing us,” Neiman said.

State Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, was the only member of the committee to vote against the bill.

Governor’s Race

Although a few of the opponents of the bill criticized its supporters of bringing it as a reaction to the 2018 Republican primary gubernatorial race in Wyoming that led to Gov. Mark Gordon’s election, Neiman said it’s also in strong consideration for the upcoming 2026 race. Neiman mentioned how there've been around eight people who have been rumored to be expressing interest in running in this race, and he’s one of them. 

Neiman said he’s focusing on his speaker of the House duties for now but wouldn’t rule out the possibility that he may run in this race.

“I’ve not really wrapped my mind around the thought of that,” he said. “It’s not that I haven’t been asked by a lot of people, but it’s like there’s a lot of very well qualified people out there that want to go and have had their eyes focused on this for some time. My political career is very short.”

Case cued into this topic during the meeting, referencing Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who was sitting in the audience. Gray laughed when this mention was made.

The secretary also issued support for the bill.

“I certainly agree with the intent of this bill trying to get the will of a larger element of this electorate,” Gray said.

But he also acknowledged HB 249 would bring a major change to Wyoming’s elections and come with a somewhat hefty price. The bill includes an initial fiscal demand of $2 million, but that is a one-time pot of funding that would simply need to be replenished, not filled back up entirely each election.

What’s It About?

A certain contingency of Wyoming Republicans have argued that Gordon was undeserving of winning the governor’s primary race because he failed to receive more than 50% of the votes, finishing out with 33% of the vote, about 8% more than his next closest competitor Foster Friess. Since that election, Gordon has enjoyed a high level of popularity within the state, according to numerous polls, and coasted to reelection in 2022, which Case pointed out.

“It seems like he enjoys a high level of approval from this state, not maybe necessarily from the entirety of the central committee of the Republican Party,” Case said. “So, my point is that adding a runoff to a situation that’s really not an open type of election kind of further narrows it.”

Gail Symons, a lobbyist with voter engagement group Civics307, issued a scathing rebuke of the bill. 

“I think this bill takes the price for the least subtle of the election bills, which is pretty amazing given there were 45,” she said. “The state majority party apparatus doesn’t like Gov. Gordon and are still upset with the results of the 2018 primary election. How unfortunate for them that he continues to enjoy one of the highest approval ratings in the country.”

After multiple people brought up similar points, Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, decided she had heard enough of this line of argument.

“It’s concerning to me that folks are coming up and impugning people’s motives on this bill,” she said. “They just want fairness across the board and it has nothing to do with this current governor because it won’t affect him at all.”

If the bill passes into law, it wouldn’t go into effect until the 2026 election cycle.

Still, Neiman argued that if the 2018 race had gone to a runoff and someone besides Gordon won it, that competitor might be experiencing just as much popularity as he is today.

“I’m thrilled that Gov. Gordon seems to enjoy a popular position, but stop and think, if we’d had a runoff there could have been somebody else that enjoyed that same popular position,” Neiman said. “I’m not thrilled on ‘what if?’ I’d like to see us have an actual majority vote that we can actually pick from.”

How It Would Work

Wyoming’s 2024 primary saw a poor turnout, with only 27% of eligible voters casting a ballot and less than 10% of the registered voters.

Neiman and Brett Moline, policy advocacy director of the Wyoming Farm Bureau, argued that it could increase public engagement with the excitement of having an extra election.

“I think there’s going to be even more impetus to get out there and and actually campaign,” Neiman said.

Under the bill, the filing period for public office would begin in February. In some ways, this would make election season in Wyoming an almost year-round affair as many candidates announce their candidacy at least a few months before the candidate filing period opens.

Neiman said the county clerks have been instrumental in helping him craft the bill in a way to alleviate their concerns. If passed into law, the new May primary would take place around the same time that Wyoming’s counties are crafting their annual budgets.

 A total of 11 states have some kind of runoff election in place, but only two are limited to the primary election. No states use a system that Neiman proposes, which would establish a pre-primary of sorts to set up for the August primary election.

Neiman also said concerns over the price of the bill are insignificant when considering the benefit it could bring to Wyoming’s elections.

“It would be worth every dime of the $2 million to have somebody in there that we know at least half the state supported,” Neiman said. 

HB 249 will next move to the Senate floor for consideration.

Vacancy Bill Rejected

A bill that would have made filling political vacancies solely at the discretion of political parties in Wyoming was killed on a 3-2 vote by the committee. 

House Bill 176 would have returned the decision to political parties about who gets to select and fill a political vacancy when a county commission or other political body can’t make a choice to fill a vacancy on their own. Currently, the decision is handed off to a judge.

Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper, said he didn’t believe the bill was ready to move forward. 

“The purpose of the bill is to centralize at the state level the selection of folks filling the vacancy,” Landen said. “I just have a great deal of heartburn. Taking away from counties the ability to select three people is a huge concern for me.”

Landen passed a motion on a 3-2 vote to delay moving the bill forward. Landen, Case and Sen. Dan Dockstader, R-Afton, voted for it while Steinmetz and Sen. Brian Boner, R-Douglas, voted against killing the bill.

Sheridan County Commissioner Holly Jennings issued support for the bill via a letter read aloud by the bill’s sponsor Rep. Laurie Bratten, R-Sheridan. Jennings was at the center of a controversy in Sheridan in 2023.

A lawsuit was filed over the Sheridan County commissioners’ decision to hand off the choice of a new commissioner to a local judge after finding that none of the three candidates, including Jennings, the Sheridan GOP provided were qualified for the job because of a lack of past experience. The Sheridan judge ruled that the commissioners acted under the law and were within their right to make the choice that they did but chose Jennings for the role.

Jennings was reelected the next year with what she claimed was the most votes received in Sheridan history.

A similar situation popped up in Park County this winter for an appointed assessor there.

Bratten brought a substitute bill limiting it to county-level vacancies, but yet the committee still didn’t bite.

“It’s disappointing because this is where the fire is,” Bratten told Cowboy State Daily, speaking of the appointment process.

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