Wyoming

Wyoming Senate race might see insurgent challenger

WASHINGTON – Blackwater Worldwide founder Erik Prince is considering a Republican primary challenge to Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, a senior member of the Senate GOP leadership team, in a race that could pit the party’s establishment against insurgents inspired by allies of President Donald Trump.

Prince was in Wyoming this weekend to discuss a possible Senate campaign with family members and has been encouraged to run by Steve Bannon, a former top White House strategist to Trump, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private deliberations. Prince is the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the former chair of the Michigan Republican Party.

Following the Republican failure to scrap Barack Obama’s health care law, Bannon has been recruiting populist Republican Senate candidates to counter the influence of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has become the target of a simmering anti-incumbent mood. Barrasso is a close McConnell ally and would receive extensive support from the Senate GOP leader and the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm in a competitive primary.

Wyoming weighs whether to harvest treasury’s capital gains to fund government

CHEYENNE – Expecting continued financial hardships in coming years, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead said he doesn’t like either option for filling the gap – cutting services or imposing taxes.

With that in mind, he said the state needs to consider its approach to the state treasury’s investment portfolio and strike a balance between long-term benefits and short-term needs. It’s time, some say, to sell off state holdings that have increased in value and “harvest” some of the $900 million in potential capital gains.

While state revenues have picked up in 2017, they are still depressed as a result of a downturn in the energy industry. Since 2015, Wyoming has been forced to cut state agencies across the board, and it’s possible more cuts are coming during the 2018 budget session of the Wyoming Legislature. Education still looms as a financial crisis, with hundreds of millions of dollars in deficits expected in coming years.

Utah

Judge denies Utah death-row challenge in high-profile case

SALT LAKE CITY – A federal judge denied a death-row challenge Thursday from a Utah prison inmate whose double-murder case was chronicled in the book “Under the Banner of Heaven.” The ruling brings Ron Lafferty, 76, a step closer to execution by firing squad, though his lawyer, Dale Baich, said he plans to appeal.

Lafferty was convicted along with his brother in the 1984 slayings of his sister-in-law Brenda Lafferty and her baby daughter after she resisted her husband’s entry into a polygamous group.

His lawyers argued that he suffered from mental illness, and his punishment was out of line with the life sentence given to his brother Dan Lafferty, among other objections.

New Mexico

New Mexico adopts political disclosure rules for dark money

SANTA FE – New Mexico is requiring independent groups that spend heavily to influence the outcome of elections and ballot measures to disclose their contributors under certain circumstances.

Rules from the New Mexico Secretary of State’s Office went into effect Tuesday that are designed to help voters understand what individuals and special interests are paying for political advertising outside of direct campaigning by candidates.

Disclosures apply when explicit endorsements are made and when groups spend more than $2,500 on a statewide election or ballot measure, or $1,000 for non-statewide elections that include state legislative seats.

Nebraska

Nebraska court ends beer sales near South Dakota reservation

LINCOLN – Four Nebraska beer stores criticized for selling millions of cans each year next to an American Indian reservation where alcohol is banned will remain closed after the state Supreme Court rejected their appeal.

The court thwarted the last-ditch effort to resume beer sales in Whiteclay, Nebraska, a tiny village on the border of South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The ruling upholds an April decision by state regulators not to renew the stores’ licenses amid criticism that the area lacks adequate law enforcement.

The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is plagued by a litany of alcohol-related problems, including high rates of fetal alcohol syndrome, and activists complain that Whiteclay fuels those issues. The four stores – in a village with just nine residents – had sold the equivalent of about 3.5 million cans of beer annually.

Whiteclay has also served for decades as a remote hangout for people to panhandle, loiter, fight and pass out on sidewalks. Its residents rely on a county sheriff’s office 23 miles away for law enforcement.

Sonny Skyhawk, a Rosebud Sioux tribe member and actor who lobbied Nebraska lawmakers to close the stores, said the ruling would help curb the “liquid genocide” that has taken place for more than a century.

Montana

Montana mayoral candidate needs only 1 vote – his – to win

MANHATTAN, Montana – There’s one person running for mayor of Manhattan, Montana, and he only needs to vote for himself to win.

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle reports Glen Clements was the only person to apply to be a write-in candidate for the position on the November ballot. Under Montana law, any other write-in votes won’t be counted because he’s the only registered write-in candidate. If he had applied to be a formal candidate, all write-in votes would be counted.

The Navy veteran and geological engineer has lived in the town of about 1,500 people for six years. Clements said his neighbors – the city’s secretary and a police officer – told him no one was running and encouraged him to.

He says he’s excited to fill the position that no one else wanted.