Wyoming
Bob Nicholas Frustrated Over “Dishonest” Mailers Telling Lies “The…
The leader of one of Wyoming’s most powerful lawmaking committees voiced frustration Tuesday about three attack campaign mailers his Republican primary election challenger sent to several Cheyenne residents.
Kathy Russell, challenger for Cheyenne’s state House District 7, distributed three mailers recently about her opponent, longtime Cheyenne Republican incumbent Rep. Bob Nicholas, who co-chairs the Wyoming Legislature’s Appropriations Committee.
Russell also is executive director for the Wyoming Republican Party.
The mailers claim that Nicholas wants young children reading early reader-level books that teach LGBTQ friendly themes, that he’s selling America’s future to China, and that he “stood with Democrats to allow gender transition surgeries on Wyoming children” and to make Wyoming taxpayers pay for them.
Nicholas countered in an angry Tuesday press release, calling the mailers a dishonest smear campaign and pointing to an incorrect citation on one that linked to a bill in Texas, not Wyoming.
“Honesty in thought and action are the first qualifications for state office,” reads Nicholas’ press release. “Unfortunately, Russell’s negative campaign is intended to misinform and spread falsehoods.
“It’s clear Ms. Russell believes she must misrepresent the facts and the truth to get elected,” it continues. “Hopefully she will not be rewarded for these patently false and outrageous lies.”
Unpack This
The mailer referencing library books says Nicholas wants kids reading such titles as “My Princess Boy” and “Not He Or She, I’m Me.” It cites its claim via a hyperlink to a Texas child abuse bill.
Nicholas has never been elected to the Texas Legislature, so could have never voted on that bill. His press release calls Russell’s mailer a “new lie the size of Texas.”
Russell told Cowboy State Daily in a Tuesday phone interview that the Texas bill reference was an unfortunate typo, stemming from a nationwide graphics consultant possibly cutting and pasting her design without taking out the inaccurate reference.
Nicholas had typos of his own in his counter-release, Russell noted.
His statement inaccurately calls the contested zone House District 8 instead of House District 7. Nicholas has served multiple terms in the state House, formerly in District 7 before boundary lines were redrawn.
The statement also says the Texas bill pertained to grade-school library books, when it instead targeted child abuse.
Speaking to the issue of potentially inappropriate books in schools, Nicholas told Cowboy State Daily that he tends to vote against state-law measures that would infringe the rule-making power of local school boards and other localized powers.
“It’s a local issue. It shouldn’t be a statewide issue,” Nicholas said. “We shouldn’t be looking down at (school boards), it should be the other way around. We’re going to help people and allow locals to do what they want to do.”
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A campaign mailer targeting state Rep. Bob Nicholas that has the longtime incumbent fuming. (Cowboy State Daily Staff)
Sex Changes For Kids
Another of Russell’s mailers claims Nicholas fought to make Wyoming taxpayers pay for gender transition surgeries for Wyoming kids.
Nicholas’ press release says that’s not true and that he supports banning gender surgeries on minors.
Nicholas voted in favor this year of Senate File 99, a ban not only on gender surgeries for children, but the prescription of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors. The bill became law July 1 after passing both legislative chambers with strong majorities.
It gives state officials the authority to penalize doctors for performing such treatments on kids.
Nicholas voted against introducing a similar but narrower bill, House Bill 63, which would only have banned sex-change surgeries for kids. He told Cowboy State Daily he expected a filibuster on that one and thought it might jeopardize lawmakers’ chances of passing a sound budget bill during the shortened budget session of the even-numbered year.
“You know they (Russell’s supporters) take one vote and they turn it into an extrapolation of my beliefs on issues, versus whether it’s a good bill or a bad bill,” said Nicholas.
He noted that the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, a coalition of state lawmakers with an emphasis on social-conservative state laws, also voted against introducing HB 63 because they preferred SF 99.
Russell conversely said Nicholas has displayed a pattern indicating he’s comfortable with child sex-change surgeries happening in Wyoming. For example, Nicholas advanced a “do not pass” vote on a 2023 version of SF 99, which sent the bill to the bottom of the legislative pile, where it ultimately died.
He said that bill had some issues. At the time, the Appropriations Committee worried it could kick Wyoming insurance recipients off the insurance marketplace by making local insurers noncompliant with national standards.
About China
Another of Russell’s fliers says Nicholas is “selling America’s future to China” and that he “voted to allow foreign communists and terrorists to buy Wyoming land.”
Nicholas voted against 2023 House Bill 116 and he voted against reassigning 2024 Senate File 102 out of a committee where it later died.
House Bill 116 would have required the registration of any foreign people, governments or companies buying land in Wyoming for purposes other than setting up a home, and could have divested those entities of their land if they failed to register.
Nicholas told Cowboy State Daily the bill may run afoul of a Wyoming Constitution provision promising “aliens” the right to buy land in the state.
That section says that, “no distinction shall ever be made by law between resident aliens and citizens as to the possession, taxation, enjoyment and descent of property.”
As for the more recent SF 102, Nicholas said it may violate the Takings Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars governments from taking people’s possessions without reimbursing them. That bill did not pass.
It would have given entities of foreign and adversarial nations that own land near Wyoming critical infrastructures, such as an Air Force base in Cheyenne, four months to sell their land or risk surrendering it to a state-run auction.
Bill sponsor Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, told Cowboy State Daily prior that she believes her bill is constitutional. The U.S. Constitution’s purpose is not to protect foreign adversaries like China, she said.
“I am still shocked that such important bills did not make it through the Legislature,” said Steinmetz. “I believe the citizens of Wyoming want us to take action on this critical issue of national security.”
Nicholas said he agrees with that latter claim, but wants to craft a bill that will lead to that result without violating either the Wyoming or U.S. constitutions.
He is now chairing a committee that’s on its third draft of a foreign-ownership restriction bill that references the concern of Steinmetz’s bill: protecting critical infrastructure from foreign adversaries’ encroachment.
Russell told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday that she stands by her mailers and what they claim.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
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)
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)
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)
Wyoming Boys 4A Swimming & Diving State Championships 2026
4A Boys State Swim Meet for 2026 in Cheyenne
Gallery Credit: David Settle, WyoPreps.com
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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