It's getting more expensive to run for statewide offices in Wyoming, according to report

Apr. 16—CHEYENNE — A report by the Equality State Policy Center shows that statewide office campaigns are getting more expensive, and stakeholders are calling on policymakers to tighten Wyoming's campaign finance reporting laws.

ESPC policy director Marissa Carpio speculated that political polarization, coupled with inflation and competition, played a role in driving up campaign costs for statewide positions over the last few election cycles.

The 2018 gubernatorial race saw a record $3 million in both campaign contributions and expenses from two separate candidates, one of them being Gov. Mark Gordon.

The 2022 race also saw a spike in campaign spending, particularly in the race for secretary of state. Chuck Gray received nearly $736,000 in contributions and spent a total of $712,941.66 on his successful campaign that year. This was double the amount of both contributions and campaign spending by his leading opponent, state Sen. Tara Nethercott, R-Cheyenne.

Limited available data hindered the ESPC's ability to accurately understand why these costs have gone up so much, but Carpio said competition for votes is one solid guess.

"Historically (in Wyoming), it's been more of a community coming together and figuring out who the next person is," Carpio told the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. "As a small-town state, I think we're kind of shifting away from that in terms of politics."

Campaign costs on the rise

The cost of campaigns for seats in both the state Senate and House of Representatives have increased significantly since 2010, according to the ESPC report.

The average candidate running for a seat in the House spent $5,047 in 2010, with a run for a Senate seat costing an average of $7,347. By 2022, those costs more than doubled for both positions, with an average campaign cost of $12,791 for the House and $15,347 for the Senate.

Senate campaign expenditures had the highest average in the 2020 election year, according to the report's analysis.

Candidates in the 2020 race for Senate District 6, which covers parts of Laramie and Platte counties, spent an average of $50,736 on their campaigns, with one candidate spending just over $74,000. However, money isn't always everything. Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne, won that race with nearly 65% of the vote, according to Ballotpedia, despite spending the least among all candidates in the race.

Still, Carpio said Wyoming residents shouldn't be discouraged from running for office by these campaign costs. It's important to note that some parts of the Cowboy State, such as Teton County, have a higher average of campaign spending than others, she said.

Campaigns for Senate seats also tend to be more expensive, since these districts are larger than House districts.

EPSC disclaimed in its report that only campaign spending from the last seven election cycles in Wyoming is immediately available on the Secretary of State's website.

"Given this relatively short time frame, the data is not robust enough to make predictions or inferences," the ESPC report stated.

A number of other factors also impacted the true cost of the race, the report mentioned, including the number of candidates, incumbency and additional sources of expenditures. Contributions by PACs, organizations and other sources on behalf of the candidate also were not included in this report.

Campaign contribution limits

Campaign contributions are limited per election, with primary, general and special elections all considered as separate. There are no campaign contribution limits for statewide offices for political party committees or political action committees (PACs). Individuals are limited to contributing up to $2,500 for a statewide office candidate and $1,500 for a non-statewide candidate.

However, individuals are not limited in how much they contribute to a political party committee, as long as that contribution is not for a specific candidate. These same limits apply to individual contributions to PACs. Immediate family members of a candidate are allowed to make unlimited contributions to their campaign.

Discussions in the Legislature's Joint Corporations, Elections and Political Subdivisions Committee last interim included how to close loopholes related to large campaign contributions in Wyoming.

The committee passed two bills that would have addressed this issue, had they passed in the most recent session.

House Bill 39, "Campaign reporting," was an attempt to close a "loophole" regarding campaign finance reporting. This bill required any group of two or more individuals who jointly pooled or spent more than $1,000 for the purpose of electioneering communications in an election to file as an organization for the purpose of campaign reporting.

In other words, the bill worked as a catch-all to include the reporting of campaign expenditures by organizations if they did not already qualify as a PAC.

Current Wyoming statute requires any organization that spends over $1,000 toward an election campaign to report the expenditure as a political action committee. In order to qualify as a PAC, the organization must have officer positions, including a treasurer to report the expenditure.

Committee co-Chairman Sen. Cale Case, R-Lander, said during a September meeting that this creates major loopholes. Organizations in Wyoming cannot contribute to a campaign directly, but they aren't limited in how much they can spend on the candidate's behalf, such as on billboards, brochures or other forms of advertising. Such groups are not necessarily required to report this as a campaign expenditure.

Case told the WTE it's important that the groups that raise money for political messaging in campaigns expose who their members are. This type of accountability helps voters understand who the message is coming from, and interpret for themselves whether it's valid.

"Do we want to know who is behind different positions in law or not?" he said. "You can't have a loophole that allows people who didn't form a PAC, essentially didn't want to follow the law to form a PAC, get away with not reporting. That seems like a pretty big loophole."

Polling from American Promise, a self-described cross-partisan organization, found that 87% of Wyomingites believe "the influence of money in politics is a threat to our democracy."

American Promise started a nationwide movement to amend the U.S. Constitution so states and Congress can "reasonably regulate campaign spending." The Corporations Committee sponsored House Joint Resolution 2 to support that constitutional amendment.

"Unfortunately, until the U.S. Constitution is amended, Wyoming is hamstrung in its ability to ensure transparency and consider reasonable campaign finance reforms," said Kaitlin LaCasse, senior director of programs and campaigns with American Promise, in a news release.

However, both bills failed the required two-thirds introduction vote in the 2024 budget session.

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus had enough members in the House of Representatives to shoot down a record number of committee-sponsored bills this past legislative session, according to reporting by WyoFile.

Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, who chairs the ultraconservative group, said this was a matter of protecting freedom of speech under the First Amendment. A Supreme Court ruling in 2010 decided that corporations were people when it came to campaign contributions.

"The bulk of these bills that have been coming out of (this committee) for campaign finance are really stifling the average citizen," Bear said.

Calls for transparency

Knowing where the messaging comes from is a key part of election integrity, Case said, because it helps voters understand who is pushing the messaging and to decide for themselves whether it's valid.

"Every piece of information that we receive in our world has a bias," Case said.

The influence of "dark money" has infiltrated Wyoming's elections over the past few years. Anonymous attack mailers, among other forms of electioneering communications, targeting lawmakers and, recently, the secretary of state have been known to spread misinformation about elected officials.

Case recalled the last primary election cycle, when he was up for reelection. The day before the election, everyone in his district received an anonymous robo call saying that the Lander senator supported the distribution of harmful abortion chemicals.

The call turned out to be from a West Virginia-based advocacy group called Students for Life, which interfered in his election. Because the call came in a day before the election, Case had no chance to counter the attack.

"And it made a difference," Case said. He performed much better in the absentee ballots, where the votes were cast before the robo calls, than the in-person polling. "That was appalling."

ESPC has been joined by Civics307 (a Wyoming political blog), AARP, American Promise and the League of Women Voters-Wyoming in calling on lawmakers to push for more "robust" campaign finance regulation.

"(Attack) mailers and electioneering materials, they cost money. Somebody is spending that money somewhere," Carpio said. "It's not a full picture for voters if they don't have the information on who was sending certain mailers or electioneering communications."

While campaign finance reporting was not selected as an interim topic by the Corporations Committee this interim, Carpio said she hoped it will be considered next year. Until then, she encouraged voters to approach political messaging with caution.

Hannah Shields is the Wyoming Tribune Eagle's state government reporter. She can be reached at 307-633-3167 or hshields@wyomingnews.com. You can follow her on X @happyfeet004.