Campaign finance complaint against Vogelheim dismissed

JACKSON (WNE) — The Wyoming Democratic Party’s campaign finance complaint against Republican legislative candidate Paul Vogelheim has been dismissed, according to Jennifer Martinez, the office’s assistant elections director in the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office.
Martinez said on Monday that she was not able to elaborate on why or provide documentation of the dismissal before press time. 
Vogelheim is running against Democrat Liz Storer to represent House District 23 in the Wyoming Legislature, a seat formerly held by Democrat Andy Schwartz.
The state party, who Storer alerted of the now-dismissed violation, filed a complaint arguing that $10,000 Vogelheim’s campaign committee had received from his late wife’s mother was improper. 
Per state law, individuals other than candidates’ immediate family cannot donate more than $1,500 to any one campaign. Statute defines “immediate family” as “a spouse, parent, sibling, child or other person living in the candidate’s household,” according to the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office.
Because Barbara Carlsberg is Vogelheim’s mother-in-law rather than biological mother, Democrats argued the contribution flouted Wyoming’s limit for people outside the immediate family. 
The goal, according to David Martin, communications director for the Wyoming Democrats, was to ensure an “even playing field” and answer if a “mother-in-law counts as immediate family.”
Democrats cited a state statute that defined a parent as a “natural parent or parent by adoption.”
Vogelheim said he returned the money soon after the complaint was publicized.
The candidate, however, accused the party of making “political fodder” out of his late wife Rebecca Carlsberg Vogelheim’s death. He argued the statute, entitled the “Termination of Parental Rights,” from which Democrats pulled their definition of “parent” from was inappropriate, implying that Barbara Carlsberg was no longer his mother-in-law.
 
This story was published on Nov. 1, 2022.