As Wyoming enters the heart of campaign season for the Aug. 20 primary, mailboxes, email inboxes and voicemails are filling up political literature. Maggie Mullen is a reporter at WyoFile who's been working with a team to look into some of these mailers, texts, phone calls and door knocks to get a sense of who’s trying to sway your vote. Maggie sat down with Wyoming Public Radio’s Nicky Ouellet to share what she’s learned about mailers some Wyoming voters have received recently.
WyoFile created its first ever election guide, including survey responses from candidates for state and federal office.
Editor's Note: This story has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Nicky Ouellet: Let's start with one that was sent out to voters in Albany County's Senate District 10. How did you first learn about these mailers? Did you get one?
Maggie Mullen: I actually didn’t get one of these mailers and I first heard about them from voters who had. The one we're talking about has this yellow font, a picture of a bear sort of darkened in the background and it talked about gun rights. But then, the photograph on it stood out to us because there's a candidate there by the name of Keith Kennedy. We knew what he looked like, and we knew that the photograph was not showing that man.
So that's kind of what started us off looking more into what's going on in this mailer. Who is the man in this photo? Of course, nowadays we have access to new types of technology that allow us to search Google for images. That's when we found out, the man that is pictured is actually of the same name, his name is Keith Kennedy. He lives in Virginia and he worked for the U.S. Senate for a number of years. He had a photo taken of that time. That photo is the first thing you find when you Google the name, Keith Kennedy. So that reporting process eventually brought me to tracking down that gentleman's contact info and giving him a call to also ask, “Are you aware that your photograph is being used in mailers?” And he wasn't.
Editor’s note: Kennedy, of Virginia, has sent a cease and desist letter to Make Liberty Win, the Virginia-based group sending out these mailers.
NO: Tell me more about this group, Make Liberty Win, who sent out this particular mailer. What have you been able to find out about them and what kind of issues or particular candidates are they promoting here in Wyoming?
MM: They are a political action committee (PAC) and they formed a few years ago. This is a very well funded political machine. Just since the beginning of 2023, they've been able to raise a little over $8.7 million. Most of that money has come from Texas. I look[ed] through their FEC filings.
NO: That's the Federal Election Commission.
MM: Yes, and I didn't find any donations from Wyoming. They're a completely out of state political action committee. Through my reporting, I've not ever been able to get in touch with them. But, for whatever reason, the PAC has decided to involve itself in legislative races in Wyoming, which aligns also with goals on their website. I think it's "electing 250 liberty-defending state legislators” across the country. And so it's not just Wyoming. There's been some reporting in Idaho about some significant amount of money that they've spent there.
But they have been very active [in Wyoming]. They've had several different mailers go out and most of those mailers, not all, but the majority of those mailers have been in support of candidates who are either members of or ideologically aligned with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. That's a group of hardline Republicans in the House that have been organizing, formed a few years ago, and they're looking to take a majority in the House this election.
NO: Thinking about some of the other materials that Make Liberty Win is sharing in Wyoming, have you noticed other inaccuracies?
MM: Yes, some of those inaccuracies have been about early voting dates, which is underway. But they also, and they did this in this particular mailer in Albany County, they frequently referred to candidates who are challengers as incumbents. If a voter comes across one of these mailers, they might be under the impression that a challenger running for their district is actually someone who has gotten this job once before and they've done it before.
NO: What have you heard from voters about receiving this kind of literature?
MM: A lot of the feedback that WyoFile has gotten has just been a lot of disappointment and a lot of shock. This type of campaigning is new to Wyoming. At least that's what I've heard from voters. I think this sort of flavor of campaigning, of big out of state money, providing mailers to voters that is not just inaccurate, but really just sort of outlandish in its inaccuracies. We won't really know until this first campaign finance deadline [on Aug. 13] just how much money is being spent right now. But I think voters are also getting this impression that there is a lot of money being spent.
NO: Separately, the Wyoming Freedom PAC has recently been sued by two lawmakers. These two lawmakers from Sweetwater County are claiming that mailers were sent out by the PAC criticizing them for votes that they say never happened. What is the backstory on that one?
MM: This political action committee, it's sort of the fundraising arm for the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. It formed in 2023. These mailers that have gone out [are] some of the first sort of large expenditures that we've seen come out of the PAC. These mailers make several allegations against several lawmakers across the state. But the claim at the center of this defamation lawsuit is that the Wyoming Freedom PAC accuses several sitting lawmakers – they say this two different ways, that they either “voted with the radical left to remove Pres. Trump from the ballot,” or they write, “This lawmaker voted no to keep Pres. Trump on the ballot this fall.”
But the Wyoming Legislature has never in its history considered, debated, voted on any proposal to remove former Pres. Donald Trump from the ballot. So these two lawmakers out of Sweetwater County are two freshmen lawmakers, Rep. J.T. Larson and Rep. Cody Wiley. They've filed the suit so we'll see what happens with that.
But as far as why the Wyoming Freedom PAC would make these allegations: Essentially, there was a footnote that while the House was debating the budget bill [in 2024] around whether or not the secretary of state could enter or initiate out of state litigation without the approval of the Legislature. The secretary of state had been involved with litigation concerning, if listeners will remember, in Colorado, the Supreme Court there said Trump can't be on the ballot. Ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court overruled them. But Secretary of State Chuck Gray was involved with an amicus brief in that case. And so lawmakers debated this back and forth. There was a vote as far as, do we want to keep this footnote or do we want to remove it? And it's that vote that folks at the Wyoming Freedom PAC say that was effectively a vote to remove Trump from the ballot.
NO: I'm curious if you have a sense of the type of impact that this kind of electioneering, political speech has, like does it get people out to vote?
MM: The candidates that have been attacked by these mailers have told me when they've gone out door-to-door to talk to voters that they've encountered some of the language in the mailers being spoken back to them from voters, asking them, “Did you support this? Did you do this? I heard you did this.” So candidates are coming up against that. Voters are getting these mailers and taking them at face value, at least to some degree.
NO: Let's end on some news you can use. What advice do you have for voters as we wade into these final weeks of primary campaigning? How are you spotting misinformation in mailers, in texts, emails?
MM: I'm sure voters are feeling like they're getting a fire hose of information, but I think that's why it's that much more important to – any kind of political mailer that you get, your baseline should be skepticism. But also, do a little bit of digging yourself and if you feel like, I can't do that digging myself, to call up your local news, your local Wyoming Public Radio or WyoFile and we'll see what we can do to help you out.
To read more into Maggie’s reporting on this, check out wyofile.com.
