By Nate Marten
Better Wyoming.
On Aug. 1, 2020, Rep. Tom Crank was named “RINO of the Month” by the website WyoRINO.com, which seeks to “expose liberal Republicans.”
Seventeen days later, after a social media barrage against him targeting Facebook users in his home district, Crank lost his election by 10 votes.
Groups with narrow interests like WyoRINO know that all they need are a few dozen—or, in this case, fewer than a dozen—of their social media followers to show up to vote and they can flip a Wyoming Primary Election.
No one understands this better than the Wyoming Gun Owners, who have turned the strategy of targeting primaries into an art.
These groups and others depend on the dismally low turnout in Wyoming primaries—and the fact that most elections in the state are over in August—in order to reshape the Legislature.
In Part 3 of Better Wyoming’s DERAILED series, we take a look at how this works
Of course, there is a simple way to decrease special interest groups’ influence over Wyoming politics, so that conversations at the Legislature turn away from hot-button issues and back toward the problems you and I face on a daily basis.
It involves you and everyone you know taking time to cast a ballot in the elections that count, which are taking place right now.
Sincerely,
Nate Martin
Executive Director
Better Wyoming
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