State seeks dismissal of Haynes residency court case

By Katie Kull
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
Via Wyoming News Exchange
 
CHEYENNE – The state of Wyoming is no longer seeking legal recourse against Taylor Haynes, despite lingering questions about whether the Republican met state residency requirements to run for governor in the August primary election.
State’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss Monday in Laramie County District Court. They said the case over whether Haynes was qualified to run, and whether the secretary of state had the power to remove him from the ballot after it was certified and printed, became moot when Haynes lost the primary.
And while the state maintained that Haynes didn’t live in Wyoming for the constitutionally mandated period, without an active legal question to consider, the judge shouldn’t make a ruling, the motion states.
If the judge doesn’t accept the motion, hearings over Haynes’ eligibility are scheduled for early January.
Haynes did not return a call seeking comment by press time Monday.
Lawyers with the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office first filed a complaint in July, alleging that Haynes lived on the Colorado side of his ranch, which straddles the southern Wyoming border. The attorneys, on behalf of the Secretary of State’s Office, asked a Laramie County District Court judge to halt Haynes’ candidacy and expedite court proceedings in anticipation of a ruling before the Aug. 21 primary.
But Haynes didn’t agree to the expedited proceedings, and Judge Thomas Campbell wrote in an order that granting the quick turnaround would, in part, violate Haynes’ rights to a fair trial.
Secretary of State Ed Buchanan wrote in a Monday news release that he hoped the Legislature would take up the eligibility issue in the future.
“The Legislature is the right body for this issue,” Buchanan wrote. “The Wyoming Constitution instructs the Legislature to ‘secure the purity of elections, and guard against abuses of the elective franchise.”