• Most local offices are explicitly nonpartisan. But a growing number of candidates and political action committees are injecting politics into them anyway.

 

By Allison Allsop, CJ Baker, Joseph Beaudet, Jonathan Gallardo, Katie Klingsporn, Ivy Secrest and Joshua Wolfson

 

Editor’s note: This story was jointly reported and authored by the Casper Star-Tribune, Gillette News Record, Powell Tribune, The Sheridan Press, WyoFile and Wyoming Tribune Eagle. The reporting was coordinated and compiled by WyoFile, with editing from all of the participating publications.

 

In the spring of 2022 — months before most people even started thinking about that year’s school board elections — billboards began appearing around Park County promoting a slate of candidates. The slate was led by Bob Berry, co-owner of a Cody bed and breakfast and a conservative activist. Berry sharply criticized Park County School District 6’s spending and performance, falsely asserting on one hyperbolic sign that 40% of students in the Cody district “can’t read.”

Berry wasn’t the only partisan voice wading into nonpartisan races. Conservative political groups handed out voting guides and pre-filled-out sample ballots backing Berry and other specific candidates in the northwest Wyoming community. The guides included recommendations for the typical partisan offices such as the Legislature — and decidedly nonpartisan ones including hospital and even conservation district boards.

That same year, the Laramie County Republican Party chose to endorse candidates in nonpartisan races there. The decision by a partisan group to weigh in on supposedly nonpartisan races raised more than a few eyebrows. Similar angst over polarization at the local level surfaced at a November 2022 meeting of the Natrona County school board, which had spent months discussing the appropriateness of certain rarely read library books. Outgoing board member and retired English teacher Debbie McCullar lashed out at Mary Schmidt, who had just won a seat on the panel. Schmidt was a member of the local Moms for Liberty chapter, a far-right group that had been among those leading the charge against “pornographic” books and critical race theory.

“Through these non-issues, you’ve brought your politics to a nonpartisan entity,” McCullar told Schmidt. “You have divided people into an ‘us versus them’ mentality, and you aren’t shy about posting your thoughts on social media.”

Flash forward two years, and the same political polarization that McCullar decried can be seen in nonpartisan races across Wyoming. In Casper and Gillette, former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan has been used to market school board candidates. In Laramie County, the local GOP is again endorsing candidates. One candidate for the Sheridan City Council has been promoting himself as a “conservative Republican,” although the job he’s seeking is nonpartisan. Door hangers in Fremont County accused a slate of school board candidates of having “ties to extreme progressive groups.” And in multiple communities, school board candidates have organized themselves into slates that roughly mirror the legislative divide between hard-line and traditional Republican factions.

The trend toward polarization is concerning for some, who worry the increasing focus on national politics will mean less attention to local issues that matter.

“It’s a bit disheartening because that makes it not about kids, that makes it about politics,” said Anne Ochs, the outgoing Campbell County School Board chair who’s served in education for 50 years.

But others say the focus on national controversies at the local level reflects the desires of constituents, who have legitimate concerns, even if the issues are being discussed nationally.

“Some of the complaints are that we’re introducing national issues into Lander that don’t need to be here,” said Scott Jensen, who serves on the Fremont County 1 school board in Lander. “I disagree with that sentiment. I think that the world is small, and everybody in Lander sees what is happening elsewhere. And I strongly believe that parents have to trust our schools, and if they don’t trust our schools, our public education institution will crumble.”

 

Growing partisanship

School boards and other local offices have never been completely immune from partisan rhetoric. The pandemic, for example, spurred local controversies that mirrored the national debate over COVID-19 guidelines. And in 2021, Sen. Affie Ellis (R-Cheyenne), authored a bill to allow candidates for nonpartisan offices to place their party affiliations on the ballots, though the measure failed introduction.

But observers in Wyoming say a notable increase in local partisanship began in 2022. That year, partisan politics and conversations dominated the race for a seat on the Sheridan County School District 2 Board of Trustees. Several candidates suggested the school district or teachers were imposing political ideology in the classroom, Superintendent Scott Stults said. Among the talking points were assertions that the district shouldn’t allow the teaching of critical race theory at its schools — which mirrored national concern among Republicans at the time.

“It’s not in our schools,” Stults said of CRT.

Brian Farmer, executive director of the Wyoming School Boards Association, also cited 2022 as the year he started to see partisanship in school boards. It was also the first year he observed school board candidates running as slates of similarly minded local politicians — on both the left and the right.

This was around the same time that Moms for Liberty was starting to gain eminence in Florida and become a national voice, he noted. The national group has chapters in 48 states that generally support right-wing policies. (The group itself maintains it is not partisan.) Members of the organization have focused on removing certain library books from schools and promoting school choice. Oftentimes, these issues are lumped together under the umbrella of parental rights. 

The group found some success during Wyoming’s 2022 election cycle. In Casper, for example, Moms for Liberty members Schmidt and Jennifer Hopkins won office, though a third candidate aligned with the group lost her bid.

But the rise in partisanship reflected more than the strength of Moms of Liberty. It also mirrored the growing polarization in American politics more broadly.

Joanne Tweedy was the chair of the Campbell County Republican Party around the turn of the century. Decades ago, she said, “the ultra-conservatives got along with the moderates, and the moderates got along with the liberals.”

“We could all go to a party together, and we didn’t throw knives or daggers at each other,” she said. “It was a decent world.”

That’s less the case now. 

She’s noticed talking points from national media outlets have been making their way into Wyoming, stirring up fear among voters. Whether it’s critical race theory or border issues, “they don’t want (that) to happen here,” Tweedy said, “and they’re certain it’s going to.”

 

Current election cycle

If voter interest can be gauged by yard signs, the local school board race is top of mind for people in Lander, where neighborhoods bristle with advertisements for the education candidates.

A clear partisan divide demarcates these campaigns, despite the school board being ostensibly nonpartisan. One slate of challengers, which includes three educators, is touted as “responsible and reasonable” by its political action committee, but radical leftist by its opponents. The second, which includes two incumbents and one newcomer, is touted for “conservative values, supporting families” by its PAC, and as emblematic of hard-right intolerance by opponents. 

Both sides of the political divide claim to have students’ interests in mind. So how is there so much to disagree about?

The board has been a mounting source of controversy in the last five years as members debated, and in some cases enacted, policies that lean into national ideological battles. These included a policy to allow school staff to carry firearms, one that removed five protected classes from the district’s non-discrimination policy and another that proposed to regulate teachers’ ability to use pronouns of their choosing. 

The all-challenger PAC resulted from community displeasure with the board’s actions, Lander Schools for the Future Director Carol Smith said. The group started organizing early in the year and worked to select reasonable candidates without obvious political leanings, she said. Signs for its candidates — Mara Gans, Daniel McLane and Buck Tilton — began to sprout up around town first. The candidates are the ones some people label as “liberal.”

The other slate of candidates includes incumbents Jensen and Taylor Jacobs. Both are parents of school-aged children. Jensen, an FBI agent, got involved with the board after becoming concerned with “the vitriol that was hurled toward the school board” by what he considers a small but vocal minority during the guns-in-school debate. (He supported the policy.) Jacobs, meanwhile, became involved out of concern over the detrimental effects of pandemic-related closures and mask mandates on children’s education. 

Jensen’s wife helped start the second PAC, Families for Fremont 1, to manage their campaigns cooperatively. They also invited a third candidate, Virginia Arbery, who teaches at the Wyoming Catholic College, to comprise a three-candidate, more conservative alternative to the first slate.

As school board meetings have been defined by disagreements and emotional speeches, the tenor of the race has been similarly tense. There was a conflict-of-interest spat that triggered a legal threat aimed at Jacobs.

One prospective voter asked Tilton his stance on abortion, he said. Gans has heard worries about the “woke agenda.” Other voters report concerns  that marginalized students don’t feel safe.

When asked about where she thinks the acrimony stems from, Lander Schools for the Future PAC Director Smith said national politicians are setting the tone. “I think it comes down from the top,” she said.

Partisanship has also seeped into local races in Campbell County. One school board candidate has campaigned using the slogan, “Make Education Great Again.” Chris Smith, a candidate for Gillette City Council, has called himself the “Republican for Ward 1” in his campaign materials. Both Smith and his opponent, Darin Edmonds, were elected as precinct committeemen in the Campbell County Republican Party in the August primary.

Smith, who chaired the Campbell County GOP from 2013 to 2017, noted that a lot of the national issues “don’t pertain” to city business or the school board. For Smith, the promotion of his party affiliation in his campaign is a tool to help voters know what he’s about, in the spirit of transparency.

“I just don’t want people to mistake me for something that I am not,” he said. “I want them to know that these are my principles and values.”

He also included it because it’s the truth: He is a Republican, and he’s proud of it.

“I fought for that brand,” he said. “I helped build the platforms, I helped people get elected into office.”

 

Party endorsements

Endorsements are one tool to help candidates win elections. And the Laramie County Republican Party hasn’t shied away from taking a stance, even for offices that are explicitly nonpartisan. Though that decision in 2022 elicited a mixed response, the party again backed candidates this year.

“The reason (we) as leadership decided to continue to do the endorsement this time around is because we have a tremendous amount of people wanting us to do so,” State Committeeman Dallas Tyrrell said. “So much is at stake with our school board that aligns with what the party is.” 

The party endorsed candidates for the Laramie County School District 1 Board of Trustees, Cheyenne City Council and mayor, all nonpartisan races. The local GOP endorsed current school board trustee Alicia Smith and new candidates Shelia Kistler and Kaleigh Rehm. The candidates were not required to make any formal agreements prior to the endorsement, Tyrrell said, though they were required to attend a GOP candidate forum to be considered and did publicly thank the party via Facebook.

The three were also identified as the preferred “conservative” candidates by Wyoming Family Alliance, a conservative political group led by former state lawmaker Nathan Winters. (The group also endorsed Jensen, Jacobs and Arbery.) The organization often works on statewide legislative issues. 

Laramie County Democratic Central Committee Chairman Jordan Evans noted that the GOP’s endorsement of school board candidates raises the question of what the community wants from school board elections. 

Evans believes that includes responsible stewardship of property tax dollars that go to schools, advocacy from districts to the state, adopting appropriate curriculum that meets standards and keeping children safe. Continuing to endorse candidates implies partisan interests in how school boards are run, Evans said. 

“I think it’s safe to say we’re pretty polarized in America, and just about everything can be passed through a partisan lens,” Evans said. “It [was] nice to know that the issues that were closest to students, and, in the case of the City Council, individual citizens, were not being passed through that lens. Now they are being exclusively passed through that lens.”

From Evans’ perspective, elected officials are entitled to do their jobs without fealty to any particular party. But the fact that candidates are accepting and embracing the endorsement indicates that they intend to let the Laramie County GOP platform guide some of their decision making and priorities.

“I think that partisan priorities don’t really have a place in the way that we administer local governments,” Jordan said.

As a response to Rehm, Kistler and Smith’s informal joint run, opposing candidates Brittany Ashby, Paul Bankes and Barbara Cook have been running as the “ABC” candidates. Some view them as the liberal counterpart to the GOP-endorsed group. 

“I’ve never spoken to or communicated with [Ashby, Bankes or Cook] in any way, and we have not endorsed them as a party,” Jordan said. “So you could view it as a left versus right, or you could view it as people who want to keep partisan politics out of local school board races running against a slate of people who are accepting partisan nominations or endorsements.”

It’s an open question, however, whether the public actually wants local races to remain nonpartisan. According to Tyrrell, the GOP received dozens of requests daily to publicly endorse candidates. 

“The people that are running on the school board are either registered [Republican, Democrat or Independent], they’re registered to a party,” Tyrrell said. “As I see it, there’s no true nonpartisan [race], and most people are looking at politics for everything right now in government, they’re looking at who’s conservative, who’s liberal, they’re looking at those things, and they’re making decisions based on that.”  

 

Partisanship in practice

Some observers say the rise in partisanship has discouraged collaboration on local governmental bodies like school boards and distracted them with irrelevant issues, rendering the institutions less effective. 

“Within the current board … there also seems to be a disconnect from what the reality is for our kids and the struggles that our district is currently encountering,” Joe Mireles, parent to a second grader in Natrona County schools, said. “It seems like that something else is politics.” 

Billie Studanski, a mother and creator of a popular Facebook group for parents, said she believes the slates of candidates are actually harmful to their own positions. Studanski’s group, “Enough is Enough: NCSD Needs to Change!” has become a forum for parents to express their concerns and frustrations with the board. It has also begun serving as a venue for parents to share information on everything from school incidents to opinions on what school to send a child to. 

“I think that they just should have ran for school board,” Studankski said of the slates. “They shouldn’t have brought their political views into it or made it public for anybody to see.”

In 2019, the Center for Public Education shared eight characteristics that make an effective school board. 

“Effective school boards have strong shared beliefs and values about what is possible for students and their ability to learn, and of the system and its ability to teach all children at high levels,” the report notes.

Farmer, the school board association director, said that a board strays from this characteristic when its members can no longer disagree while still moving forward. He does not think that’s happened yet in Wyoming, but said other states are experiencing that problem.

“In a truly functional system, all points of view should be brought to the table, have the opportunity to be discussed and then decide on a path forward,” said Farmer. “It’s whether or not we decide on a common path forward. I think that makes or breaks a district.”

To the north in Gillette, Ochs said that when politics are brought into the mix, it’s the teachers and students who suffer. The teachers feel the pressure when the target is on their backs, and that trickles down to the students.

“It’s sad that people will make their voting choices based on political affiliation, rather than what’s best for the kids,” she said.

 

A more united future? 

While the trend toward polarization and partisanship is apparent in cities like Casper and Cheyenne, there are indications the trend is reversing in other Wyoming communities.

Since being hired in 2020, Sheridan City Administrator Stuart McRae has noticed a better sense of collaboration among council members on several topics, including housing.

“We know we have a housing need,” McRae said, “and I see a lot of collaboration there when it comes to some of these things.”

McRae said some of that dynamic can be attributed to establishing a set of guidelines for the city’s governing body surrounding potential amendments to resolutions or ordinances. He said by asking council members to submit amendments ahead of a regular meeting, they’re given more time to consider and discuss potential consequences with each other or city staff.

Stults, the Sheridan County School District 2 superintendent, has noticed some points where board members may have voted based on politics, but they generally don’t lean into partisan rhetoric.

“But from the general perspective that I’ve seen, our trustees are really good about looking at what’s best for our kids,” he said.

This year, candidates to fill five seats on the school board have followed suit, focusing more on the district’s students than politics.

“I would say that two years ago, it was very apparent that there was absolutely politics involved in candidates that were running for those positions,” Stults said. “I did not hear that when we had the [candidate] forum [this year]. They were talking about student learning and how [we can] continue to take our great schools and make them even better.”

Back in Park County, where Berry and the other conservative candidates came up short in 2022, observers expected another partisan school board race this year. By the final day of the candidate filing period, four people had declared their intent to run for the four available positions. Longtime school board member Stefanie Bell thought each had the experience and knowledge to succeed, but she figured more candidates were coming. 

She lingered in the Park County Elections Office that August afternoon, taking a seat, opening a book and waiting. When the filing deadline arrived, however, the declared candidates — one incumbent and three newcomers — were unopposed; it’s the first time that’s happened in 18 years.

“It was a surprise to get up and grab my book at 5 o’clock and walk out the door [of the elections office],” Bell said, adding, “it just makes you scratch your head.”

She said the absence of more partisan challengers must reflect “a certain level of satisfaction” among the public. But Berry said the lack of candidates is partially because he and the Park County Patriots felt they could make more of an impact in other races. That included legislative battles, where the county’s more rightward candidates prevailed in a contested, expensive August primary.

When it came to the school board, “we figured, ‘You know what? We’re going to fight that fight later,’” Berry said.

The Park County Patriots and Conservative Roundup PAC issued their joint “Good Guys” list of preferred candidates this month, and none of the nine declared school board candidates in Powell and Cody earned a nod. The groups’ lone school board endorsement was of a write-in candidate in Powell. But Berry indicated that voters can expect more conservative challengers in 2026.

“You can’t win all the battles at one time,” he said. “The dark side has been coming this way incrementally. We got to take them out incrementally.”

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