Casey Edwards

As primary and municipal elections start Thursday (today), there are already more candidates announced for Park County commissioners than there are available seats.

Cody tattoo shop owner, father and gold prospector Casey Edwards said after considering running for commissioner as a way to actually do something instead of just rant about issues on Facebook, he got serious after receiving an anonymous call last Thursday.

Edwards recalled the man said if he continued with his plan of running, all of his past would be publicly revealed.

“They just said ‘listen, if you stay on the path that you're on, everything about you is going to come out and your business and your family will crumble …’ man that lit a fire under my ass. You know you can't sit back and just expect things to change because you're [complaining] on Facebook.”

Edwards is the third candidate to announce for one of two available commissioner seats, joining incumbent Scott Mangold of Powell and fellow challenger and Cody business owner Karin Richard.

Edwards said from looking at Richard’s campaign posters he agrees with almost all of her points. He said most of all he wants Cody to not become Jackson, a change he feels is already beginning.

“I want Cody to stay Cody,” he said. “I want to see progress without harming the people of our county.”

And he wants to find some solution for the high taxes, especially property taxes, that have meant his son and people like him can’t afford a place in Cody despite working full time.

“I don’t know it all, but I do have a very strong sense of common sense,” he said.

Edwards grew up in Lovell, then left to go to the East Coast, where he built himself a successful tattoo business, appearing in national magazines and cable programs.

In 1996 he said he got tired of the East Coast life and started a shop in Cody, working half of the year there, half in North Carolina. In 2008 he fully moved to Cody.

Now he runs Xtreme Tattoo in Cody, prospects for gold in his area mining claims and even consults with a gold company in Montana. 

However, he said that as everyone seems to be too busy working to afford a life here to keep up on what’s going on in local government, he can be the one to step up. He’s started watching commission meetings and said he’s concerned about the possibility of the county paying to expand and maintain a road to a proposed new state shooting complex if Park County is chosen as the destination, and of it becoming a state park limiting access to public land.

However, he said he is in favor of working to try and expand Yellowstone Regional Airport’s services.

“Any vote that I would make on that county commission is going to be with the absolute, utmost input from the community,” he said. “Everybody here in town is too busy working to make a living, to be able to pay attention to those things. I would really like to be that ear and that voice.”