Candidates selected, Weston County commissioners select candidates for state offices
According to the Weston County Commission and the Wyoming Republican Party, the Wyoming State Legislature grew by two members on Tuesday morning.
In the latest maneuver in an ongoing dispute over rural representation in the state legislature, the Weston County commissioners on Oct. 22 selected Karl Lacey and William Curley to fill the state representative and state senator seats that commissioners had declared vacant in April. That decision was made in response to the Wyoming Legislature’s decision to continue to divide the county when it created legislative district maps in 2022.
The commissioners had approved a resolution in a 3-2 vote on April 2 to declare the vacancies, but chose not to act on it until after the August primary election. On Sept. 3, the commissioners approved sending Eathorne written notice of the resolution after Curley, a county resident and former county attorney, reported that Eathorne asked for it.
The county GOP scheduled a public meeting on Oct. 16 at the Weston County Library where precinct committee members, under state statute, were allowed to select three candidates for each vacancy, according to Weston County Republican Party Chair Kari Drost. In order to be eligible, the candidates had to be registered Republicans.
According to a letter that Drost provided to the News Letter Journal and that Wyoming Republican Party Chairman Frank Eathorne signed, the county party on Oct. 16 selected Don Taylor, Stanley Jasinski and Lacey as candidates for the vacant seat in the Wyoming House and Patricia Bauman, Curley and Sue Mireles as candidates for the Wyoming Senate seat created by the commissioners’ vacancy declaration.
The selection of the three candidates meant the commissioners had five working days to choose one final candidate for each seat, which prompted Tuesday’s special meeting.
Taylor, who is the present Weston County Commission Chair, joined commissioners Vera Huber and Garrett Borton in casting votes to fill the vacancies, but Commissioners Ed Wagoner and Nathan Todd did not attend the meeting. Both had expressed opposition to the vacancy resolution and voted against it in the spring.
Commissioner Vera Huber told the News Letter Journal that she was disappointed that the other commissioners were not present, and that the three commissioners who did attend all voted for Curley for the senate seat. Huber reported that she nominated Taylor for the house position, but Borton and Taylor supported designating Lacey for the role and cast their votes for him instead.