Wyoming GOP considering loyalty tests for candidates, voiding state laws

Some county Republican parties are asking the Wyoming Republican Party to throw off the state election laws that govern it, establish loyalty tests for political candidates seeking its nomination or endorsement, and tighten the party’s dispute resolution process. Slated for its statewide convention Thursday in Douglas, the Wyoming Republican Party is set to review more than 100 proposed changes to its bylaws.

Many of those changes assert that the state GOP has the autonomy rights of a private group and doesn’t have to follow state laws dictating its processes and membership. That’s based on the assertion that, under the First Amendment associational right and prior court cases, the Wyoming Republican Party can function how it wishes. It’s a question recently posed in an ongoing Wyoming court case, where Hot Springs County Republican Party members who say they were wrongly ousted from leadership positions are using state law to challenge the state party.

Crook County GOP Chair Mark Koep, whose party is bringing language pronouncing the state’s major parties laws void, said his entity’s goal isn’t to launch litigation against Wyoming. “Title 22 (election law) has provisions in it that have already been found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court,” said Koep. “They’re technically null and void. The reality is it’s already kind of known — it’s just nobody’s doing anything about it.”

The Wyoming Supreme Court issued a ruling in 2023 that subjected the Uinta County Republican Party to state law, but the court declined at that time to consider whether the party has a fundamental right that transcends state law. Koep pointed to a 1989 U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned a slate of California laws restricting a political party. A significant case in which a court upheld a private sorority’s right to dictate its own membership unfolded in Wyoming’s federal court district.

“The Party possesses the absolute and exclusive right to determine its own leadership, define its own organizational structure, select its standard-bearers, and articulate its own message,” says a proposed bylaw change by the Crook County GOP. State law requires that major parties’ county leadership groups consist of men and women elected every two years at the primary election. A Weston County proposal would call for county and state party leaders to be selected “in such a manner, as the Party shall determine in these bylaws,” free from “any state statutory formula.”

Koep said he doesn’t foresee that ending grassroots elections. “The goal is not to destroy the Republican party,” said Koep. “The goal is to strengthen the Republican party and determine how do we do that in a way that’s good for Wyoming Republicans.”

Wyoming law also restricts major parties from spending money “directly or indirectly” to promote one candidate vying for its nomination over another during the primary election. A Weston County proposal would attempt to trump that law. “The Wyoming Republican Party … reserves the absolute First Amendment right to endorse, support, oppose, and provide financial assistance to candidates of its choosing at any point in the election cycle,” says the proposed language. Any state law preventing that “is hereby declared unconstitutional and void.”

Natrona County GOP committeewoman Marcia Neumiller said if the party gains that authority, it could pit more “traditional Republican” led county parties against what she called the more Freedom Caucus aligned state GOP. “I am not in support of our state party supporting Freedom Caucus candidates,” Neumiller said. “Sorry, I’m not.” She said the state party is in a spiral of defining conservatism for others. “There are things that are in the Wyoming state Republican platform that do not align with a traditional Republican value,” she said. “It’s gone to the extreme right.”