Dark money is trying to buy our election
Our local elections were never meant to be auctions. Yet that is what they are starting to resemble in Wyoming.
Once again, Make Liberty Win, a Virginia-based political action committee, is pouring money into Wyoming campaigns. It has spent heavily in our local House District 40 race and appears to be investing even more in statewide contests. Its glossy mailers arrive almost daily. Its paid workers, from outside of the area, knock on our doors and tell us which Wyoming candidates deserve our support.
That should trouble every voter, no matter which candidate benefits.
In 2024, Make Liberty Win spent more than $370,000 in Wyoming legislative races. That was an extraordinary amount in a state where a House race once could be run for less than a few thousand dollars. The group’s mailers contained false or careless information, including incorrect voting dates, cherry picked voting records, mislabeled candidates and even the photograph of the wrong person running for office.
Judging by the mountain of junk mail filling local mailboxes, the operation appears larger this year. Final reports will tell us how much was spent. But voters do not need a campaign report to know they are being flooded.
Make Liberty Win says it stands for liberty and limited government. Those are fine words. But its website offers broad slogans and little detail about what its leaders want for Wyoming. News reports have tied the group to Young Americans for Liberty, a national organization that supplies most of its money while keeping its own donors hidden from public view. Legitimate news reports have also identified marijuana legalization as part of the organization’s broader agenda.
Wyoming voters deserve to know that. More importantly, they deserve to know whose money is paying for the mailers, text messages, phone calls and door knockers.
This is the central problem with dark money. The name printed on a mailer may be public, but the people writing the checks behind that name can remain hidden. Voters see the attack. They do not see the donor, the motive or the larger plan.
Make Liberty Win has every legal right to speak. But we have an equal right to question why a Virginia political machine, funded through an organization based outside Wyoming, is so determined to shape our Legislature and statewide offices.
This is not about protecting incumbents. It is not about favoring one wing of the Republican Party. It is about protecting Wyoming’s right to govern itself.
Candidates should win by earning trust, explaining their records and facing voters directly, not through anonymous national money and hired messengers.
Our lawmakers should require faster, clearer reports and full disclosure of the original sources of money spent in state and local races. Every campaign dollar intended to influence a Wyoming voter should lead back to a real name.
Until then, voters should treat every anonymous attack with deep suspicion and skepticism. Wyoming’s elections belong to us — not to the richest national group willing to fill our mailboxes and buy a place at our doors in their attempt to buy our elections.
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