Wyoming

Cheyenne Legislator Dan Zwonitzer Runs For 11th Term In Wyoming House

Published

2 years ago

May 23, 2024

Cheyenne Legislator Dan Zwonitzer Runs For 11th Term In Wyoming House

State Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, R-Cheyenne, has seen the evolution of the Wyoming Legislature during his nearly 20 years in office. Now, he said, is not a good time to leave it.

“You don’t leave the Legislature when it’s at a point of chaos,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “We’re probably in the worst shape we’ve been in in 20 years. That’s not when you bail ship. You right the ship.”

Infighting has become common in the state Legislature of late, with a clear division marking the more moderate and farther right Republican factions.

On a larger scale, Zwonitzer said he sees a concerning lack of effort from younger legislators in getting to know the issues and working hard to find solutions for them. Although he acknowledges the learning curve in the Legislature is steep, filled with dense policies and complicated economics, he said many legislators aren’t even bothering to engage with the curve.

“It seems like it’s easier to sit back and throw rocks and complain and stir the pot than it is to find effective solutions,” he said. “Our decisions have consequences that are wide ranging and extremely dynamic to people’s livelihoods and their lives.”

Zwonitzer has won each of his last two Republican primary elections by about 150 votes. His current district makes up southeast Cheyenne and rural Laramie County.

Running against Zwonitzer in the House District 43 Republican primary is Cheyenne resident Ann Lucas, a farther right Republican and former credit union and banking executive who moved to Cheyenne in 2002. She describes herself as a conservative who believes in limited government and taxation only when its absolutely necessary.

Lucas believes Zwonitzer, who was first elected in 2004 and is the longest-serving current House member, has been in office far too long.

“Citizen legislature is not supposed to be occupied by lifers,” she said.

Vision For The Future

“Righting the ship” is what Zwonitzer considers his top priority if reelected to another term in office.

He has staked his position as one of the more prominent faces in the Wyoming Caucus, a group that has formed in opposition to the farther right Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which is often blamed for most of the infighting.

Zwonitzer said the source of the divide is much more than the Wyoming Caucus or the Freedom Caucus, but rather legislators not being on the same page about what direction Wyoming should move in, giving in to “anger-based politics” instead of accomplishing real policy.

“Somethings got to give, and we’ve got to move Wyoming in a direction, even if it’s a direction some people don’t like, other people will,” he said. “We’re not doing any good just yelling at each other and playing divisive games.”

Lucas said she considers the Freedom Caucus members her friends and the likelihood that she will vote the same as them high.

“I predict that I will likely rarely vote in the same way my opponent has in his 20 years in the House,” she said.

‘Game Of Chicken’ With Federal Money

Many members of the Freedom Caucus have also spoken against accepting money from the federal government because that usually comes with various strings attached. Taking a stand by not accepting money from the feds, Zwonitzer said, “is a game of chicken” Wyoming is not going to win.

He also said many new legislators also don’t understand the boom-and-bust nature of Wyoming’s revenue streams, which are highly dependent on mineral revenue. Zwonitzer mentioned the dire economic straits Wyoming was in around 2020, a situation the state had to use its savings and federal assistance to get out of. Because of scenarios like this, he and many other veteran legislators like to dedicate a certain portion of the budget each year to savings, a move often opposed by members of the Freedom Caucus.

Zwonitzer believes the legislative moves the state has been making for the last 60 years can be attributed to the high quality of life in Wyoming today, not blamed for its problems. Tearing down the status quo only goes so far without a clear vision for the future, he said.

“The Freedom Caucus relies on whatever the hot-button issue of the month is that generates people’s anger,” he said. “I would be interested to know what their vision is for 10 years from now.”

If reelected, Zwonitzer, chair of the House Labor, Health and Social Services Committee, said he wants to work to keep health care costs down, which have increased significantly in recent years for both private insurance and uncompensated care. He hopes this committee, which is made up of mostly freshman legislators, can do a better job tackling this issue in the upcoming session.

On energy, Zwonitzer said he wants Wyoming to continue to serve the market and what it is dictating. He wants to keep coal production viable as long as possible, in whatever form that might look like. Zwonitzer also believes there could be a real future for hydrocarbons and other alternative approaches to energy in Wyoming, but also wants to keep supporting the state’s fossil fuels industry.

He wants people to realize the reason Wyoming has such low taxes is because of the state’s robust mineral industry, which he estimates supports 80% of the Wyoming state government budget directly or indirectly.

Zwonitzer said Lucas has often blamed him for the increase to the state’s fuel tax and creation of the state lodging tax during his time in office. He responded that only two tax increases in 20 years is “pretty damn good.”

Lucas’ Plan

Lucas said her experience working in the banking industry makes her an excellent fit for the Legislature. She also said she has coached hundreds of people and families on how to improve their personal financial conditions and taught financial literacy at all school levels.

Lucas said she is concerned by the “blatant tax-and-spend culture” the Legislature has developed. She believes property tax solutions could be achieved by cutting the spending.

“We must be far more transparent in reporting to our citizens and more frugal with our citizens’ money,” she said.

On the transparency front, she believes an electronic voting system should be developed for the Legislature so residents can see how their lawmakers are voting on every issue. Zwonitzer complained this spring that roll call votes were being called so frequently that they were being weaponized.

Lucas said the state should do more audits of its financial accounting and eliminate some of its trust fund accounts. She also wants to reduce overall government spending because many Wyoming residents are struggling financially.

“It’s very hard to decide if you can afford your child’s school clothes while watching our Legislature approve building unnecessary, mega schools when smaller schools would better serve the students of Wyoming,” she said.

Specifically, Lucas is concerned about education spending in Wyoming. Wyoming has one of the highest rates for per-pupil spending in the country but falls around the middle of the pack for its test scores.

She also believes progressive ideology has entered Wyoming’s public schools. In conversations with teachers, Lucas said they’ve told her they’ve been instructed to focus on social emotional learning and sexual ideology rather than teaching basic skills.

“Our current Legislature will not stand up to the federal government to protect our families and ensure that the education our children receive ensures the highest academic performance possible,” she said. “If we’re going to spend more than everyone else, our students should be receiving world-class educations.”

On parental rights, she doesn’t believe schools should be allowed to conduct any survey without parental consent, promote any activist organization or sexual ideology with children.

“This is not the purview of public education,” she said.

She also opposes President Joe Biden’s new Title IX rules, which ban sex discrimination and prohibitions on people using the bathrooms of their choice.

Lucas also brought up a 2022 redistricting dispute involving Zwonitzer as a reason he shouldn’t be reelected, which is how she ended up in his district in the first place. She also claimed he voted with Democrats on 84% of votes during the 2024 legislative session.

Leo Wolfson can be reached at leo@cowboystatedaily.com.

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Wyoming

Casper veteran David Giralt joins race for Wyoming U.S. House seat

Published

4 hours ago

February 27, 2026

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Casper veteran David Giralt joins race for Wyoming U.S. House seat

CASPER, Wyo. — David Giralt, a Casper-raised military veteran and conservative Republican, has announced his candidacy for Wyoming’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. The congressional seat is being vacated by Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman, who launched a campaign in December for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by retiring Sen. Cynthia Lummis. […]

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Wyoming

Rivalries and Playoff Positioning Highlight Week 11 Wyoming Girls Basketball Slate

Published

16 hours ago

February 27, 2026

Press Room

Rivalries and Playoff Positioning Highlight Week 11 Wyoming Girls Basketball Slate

It’s Week 11 in the 2026 Wyoming prep girls’ basketball season. That means it’s the end of the regular season. 3A and 4A schools have their final game or games to determine seeding before the regional tournament, or if a team is locked into a position, one last chance to fine-tune before the postseason. Games are spread across four days.

WYOPREPS WEEK 11 GIRLS BASKETBALL SCHEDULE 2026

Every game on the slate is a conference matchup. Several rivalry contests are part of this week’s schedule, such as East against Central, Cody at Powell, Lyman hosting Mountain View, and Rock Springs at Green River, just to name a few. Here is the Week 11 schedule of varsity games WyoPreps has. All schedules are subject to change. If you see a game missing, please email david@wyopreps.com.

CLASS 4A

Final Score: Laramie 68 Cheyenne South 27 (conference game)

CLASS 3A

Final Score: Lyman 40 Mountain View 26 (conference game)

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CLASS 4A

Final Score: Evanston 41 Riverton 39 (conference game)

Final Score: Natrona County 42 Kelly Walsh 38 (conference game) – Peach Basket Classic

Final Score: #4 Thunder Basin 64 Campbell County 32 (conference game)

CLASS 3A

Final Score: #1 Cody 77 Worland 33 (conference game) – 5 different Fillies with a 3, and Hays led the way with 34 points.

Final Score: #2 Lander 49 Lyman 34 (conference game)

Final Score: #4 Wheatland 51 Douglas 40 (conference game)

Final Score: #5 Powell 48 Lovell 42 (conference game)

Final Score: Burns 56 Torrington 43 (conference game)

Final Score: Glenrock 78 Newcastle 30 (conference game)

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CLASS 4A

Rock Springs at #2 Green River, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)

#4 Thunder Basin at #5 Sheridan, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)

#1 Cheyenne East at #3 Cheyenne Central, 6 p.m. (conference game)

Jackson at Star Valley, 6 p.m. (conference game)

CLASS 3A

#3 Pinedale at Mountain View, 4 p.m. (conference game)

#1 Cody at #5 Powell, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)

Buffalo at Glenrock, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)

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CLASS 3A

Newcastle at Buffalo, 12:30 p.m. (conference game)

Glenrock at Rawlins, 3 p.m. (conference game)

Torrington at #4 Wheatland, 5:30 p.m. (conference game)

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Wyoming Boys 4A Swimming & Diving State Championships 2026

4A Boys State Swim Meet for 2026 in Cheyenne

Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com

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Wyoming

Political storm in Wyoming as far-right activist caught handing checks to lawmakers

Published

1 day ago

February 26, 2026

Press Room

Political storm in Wyoming as far-right activist caught handing checks to lawmakers

Controversy has engulfed Wyoming’s state legislature after a conservative activist was photographed handing checks to Republican lawmakers on the state house floor, in an incident that has highlighted intra-conservative divisions and the role of money in the Cowboy state’s politics.

The political storm started on 9 February, when Karlee Provenza, a Democratic lawmaker, took a photo showing Rebecca Bextel, a conservative activist and committeewoman for the Teton county Republican party, handing a check to Darin McCann, a Republican representative, on the legislative floor. Marlene Brady, another Republican representative, stands in the photo’s background, a similar piece of paper pinched between her fingers.

“You have a person from the richest county in the country coming down to Cheyenne to hand out checks on the house floor,” Provenza said. “I have never seen something so egregious.”

Questions around the checks were soon swirling, and answers weren’t forthcoming. When asked what Bextel gave to her, Brady told a reporter for local outlet WyoFile: “I can’t remember.”

Then Bextel herself addressed the incident. “I raised $400,000 in the last election cycle for conservative candidates, and I will be doubling that amount this year,” Bextel wrote on Facebook on 11 February. “There’s nothing wrong with delivering lawful campaign checks from Teton county donors when I am in Cheyenne.”

Since then, it has emerged that the checks came from Don Grasso, a wealthy Teton county donor, who told the Jackson Hole News and Guide that he wrote the checks for Bextel to deliver to 10 Freedom caucus-aligned politicians. Grasso said the checks were intended as campaign contributions, and were not tied to specific legislation. It is unclear how many checks were ultimately delivered, but two of four confirmed recipients include the speaker of the house, Chip Neiman, and John Bear, the former head of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.

The Wyoming house has formed a legislative investigative committee, and the Laramie county sheriff’s office said they’d open a criminal investigation.

Bextel declined to answer questions from the Guardian. Brady, McCann and Bear did not respond to requests for comment.

Neiman said he considered the criticism a “wraparound smear campaign”. He said: “It never once crossed my mind that this was bribery.

“These legislators, myself included, are now guilty until we can prove that we’re innocent. How is that right in this country? Isn’t that a little bit backwards?”

The scandal has highlighted long-standing divisions in Wyoming’s Republican party, which in recent years has seen a growing divide between old school, more moderate conservatives and a harder-right Freedom Caucus.

Several former Republican lawmakers forcefully condemned their colleagues for accepting the checks, and a local Republican party branch called for the lawmakers’ resignations.

Ogden Driskill, a Wyoming Republican senator, told the Guardian he does not consider Bextel’s actions to be illegal, but that “just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should”.

Bextel has spent years pushing against housing mitigation fees in Wyoming, and Driskill noted that she distributed the house floor checks just days before a bill she had publicly supported was set to be heard. Bextel was registered as a member of the press, not as a lobbyist when she delivered the checks.

“Ethically and morally, it’s bankrupt to a massive degree,” Driskill said.

Neiman said that he and other legislators who received checks have supported similar bills in the past: “Bribery is paying somebody to do something they would not otherwise do.”

Nationally, the 2024 election cycle saw record-spending from the mega-wealthy, as well as dark money groups. Wyoming followed the trend, in a tense red-on-red primary season.

For those gearing up to campaign this year, Teton county, the richest in the US, and Bextel’s picturesque home turf, is an essential stop. Its extreme wealth gives it a foothold on the national level as well. Palantir chief executive Alex Karp and Donald Trump attended an annual Republican leadership fundraiser at Jackson Hole in 2024, and JD Vance attended the same one in 2025.

Bextel pulls dollars from Teton county into the Freedom Caucus side of Wyoming’s conservative split. She hosted no-press-allowed meet and greets earlier this year benefitting leading candidates for Wyoming’s governor and open US House seat.

In an interview with the Open Range Record, a media network she co-founded, Bextel said controversy around the checks was solely because she was making “even playing field” in Wyoming against the state’s more moderate Republicans, who she calls “George Soros” candidates. She said that she will be sure to keep raising money – just away from the legislative floor.

“I guess I’m gonna ask all the gentlemen and gentleladies to step outside the Capitol while I hand them a check,” Bextel said. “Let me be clear: I’m doubling down.”

But it’s not just wealthy local donors putting their weight behind the factions. Last election cycle, out of state groups spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on anonymous and often inaccurate mailers.

“These actors, especially from the far right, they like to push the bounds of the norms,” said Rosa Reyna Pugh, an organizing and advocacy consultant at Western States Center, an Oregon-based non-profit focused on democracy in the western United States. “They like to see what policies they can kind of push, and see where they can play a piece,” Reyna Pugh said.

While Neiman and Driskill fight politically, they do agree on one thing: summer will bring an expensive and brutal campaign season.

“You’re going to see more dark money than you’ve ever seen. We’ve done absolutely nothing to enforce it. Our secretary of state has not even made a slight attempt to deal with it,” Driskill said. “You’re going to see lots and lots of outside money and I think you’re seeing it on both sides.”

As national questions swirl around pay-to-play politics and profiteering in the Trump administration, Provenza wants better for the Cowboy State.

“We should not be aligning ourselves with how the federal government is conducting itself or how federal elections conduct themselves,” Provenza said. “We owe something far better and more honest to the people of Wyoming than that.”

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