Election Interference from the Preachers of "Democracy"

On Friday, March 21st, the Sheridan Press published an article entitled “Sheridan County Republicans delay executive officer election.” About the only accuracy in that article was the headline. The Sheridan County Republican Party responded to the Press, both in writing and multiple times in person. David Iverson, of Cowboy State Politics, also researched what happened and released a podcast on Monday excoriating the Press [LINK HERE]. As of this publication, the Press has failed to either retract their article or issue an apology.

Here is the letter that Tod Windsor, Sheridan County State Committeeman and the person who placed the public notice with the Sheridan Press, sent to the author of the Sheridan Press article.

Dear Joseph,

Your article entitled Sheridan County Republicans delay executive officer elections, is fraught with errors, making you look distinctly uninformed at best and a spreader of misinformation at worst.

First of all, there is no requirement for the Sheridan County Republican Party to place a public notice at wyopublicnotices.com. We are only required to place a notice in the county "newspaper of record" 10 days or more before the March meeting in odd numbered years. You claim that we had not placed a notice as of 9AM Friday morning, yet next to the continuation of your article in the print edition is our public notice. Since you work at a newspaper, I'm sure you realize that we could not have placed that ad on Friday for publication on Friday.

Secondly, there is only one "slate" of candidates running, and that is the Jim Shellinger, et al, group. Existing officers running for re-election are required, per the by-laws, to announce their intentions to run at least 30 days prior to the election. Harry Pollak, Carla Klopfenstein, Natalie Trampe, and myself all did so at our January meeting. At the March 13 Patriot Chat, Bryan Miller announced he was not running for Chairman. James Temple announced he was running for Chair and Sharon McCright announced she was running for Vice Chair. Bryan Miller asked several times if there was anyone else in attendance who would like to announce their candidacy, and no one responded, even those who later turned up on a slate announcement. Makes you wonder why they didn't say anything when they had the opportunity, doesn't it?

Thirdly, this specific meeting is a regular meeting of the County Central Committee. Per state statute, and one wonders why the state feels the need to regulate the internal workings of a private organization, there must be a meeting in March and we must elect officers at the meeting. While our meeting was originally scheduled for March 22, we advertised March 31 as the back-up date in case of inclement weather. Also per statute, there are only a few meetings we are required to place a notice in the newspaper: the March meeting in odd numbered years, the County Caucus and County Convention in even numbered years. Since March is our third meeting this year, and we'd advertised the previous meetings, it slipped our mind that we had to comply with a10-day requirement for this meeting. We realized the error this week when we were finalizing the meeting agenda on Wednesday evening (the 19th). Given the requirement for meeting in March and the 10-day notice, getting an ad in your paper on the 21st and moving the meeting to our "snow day" of March 31 was our only option for compliance. Again, you should ask, why is the state regulating the internal workings of a private organization and forcing us to spend money with nothing in return?

There are certain people in our county who present themselves as all-knowing when it comes to the Republican Party and Wyoming politics. If you haven't figured it out yet, they generally are incorrect in their information. If you want the correct information, you should ignore them and talk to the party leadership. We know what is going on and we don't have an agenda as do those folks who dislike us.

I hope you will be able to attend the meeting on the 31st. There is a group who will attempt shenanigans based upon bad information and their desire to wrest control of the party from the grassroots back to the monied elite establishment. It should be festive. 

*****

As they say on TV, but wait, there’s more!

County Chair Bryan Miller met and spoke with the acting editor of the Sheridan Press, Ashley Snoozy, more than once. She initially promised to have her reporter interview Chairman Miller on Tuesday morning so a new article could be published describing the correct notice process and get it out this week, that did happen.  Since then, the reporter, and Ms. Snoozy have pulled back on when such an article would be published and have now stated that they will endeavor to have something published by 6pm on Monday, 31 March just as the election meeting is being started.  We think this is unacceptable as a solution when such an egregious error was made on their part. Chairman Miller then asked to have the previous article retracted which would resolve the issue, however, that request was rebuffed.  Chairman Miller also noted in his last meeting with Ms. Snoozy, that there now appears to be an unwillingness to issue any sort of correction in the days leading up to the County Central Committee Meeting on 31 March. Ms. Snoozy has had many days to publish a correction of some type and has not. Chairman Miller hopes The Sheridan Press will do the right thing, but at the moment, he believes it is not looking good.

Apparently, the Press met with lawyers and the Wyoming Newspaper Association team for over three hours to decide how they planned on dealing with their misinformation. They are trying valiantly to figure out if the Republican Party, a private, independent organization, must comply with the Open Meetings rules. If you want to do a deep dive into this, Wyoming Statute says that the party must publish a notice of the meeting in the county newspaper of record at least 10-days prior to the meeting date. The Wyoming Republican Party is NOT a governmental organization and has no duty to comply with any Open Meetings or Sunshine rules.

We can’t tell you what to think, but it seems the Press thought they had a Signalgate moment with the County Republican Party. You’ll note they never pull such stunts with the Democrat Party or even the local governmental bodies that fail to notify properly.

And they wonder why people don’t trust the media.

By the way, here’s the ad that appeared in the 21 March edition of the Press, right next to the article claiming the party did not properly notice the meeting.