Troy Bray

Powell City Council candidate Troy Bray isn’t one to mince words. In a recent interview, he said the city is heading toward having more potholes than streets, should stop employing a city administrator and “be more out of your life than it is.”

“I want people to be able to live the way they want to live … and still be able to rely on the city government being there for those things that city government should be there for — you know, making sure that the water is flowing and that police are available when they're needed,” Bray said. “And balancing that where [police] availability is not intrusiveness.”

Bray, 53, is challenging Councilwoman Lesli Spencer in Ward 3. He moved to Powell from Casper seven years ago and he calls this community “the best place in the world.”

“And I want it to stay that way,” Bray said. 

City priorities

He contends the city government is not as good as it used to be, and said the recent water main break beneath Coulter Avenue is an example of the city falling behind on infrastructure.

“Those things need to be taken care of and maintained and replaced occasionally — not so much subsidizing a swimming pool,” he said.

Bray believes the city has been wasting money and should reduce its property tax levy by 1 mill. That would save the average homeowner about $45 a year while removing about $76,600 from the city’s general fund.

“There’s plenty of places we can cut to make up for it [the lost revenue] that nobody is going to notice,” Bray said, suggesting 20% of the city’s budget could be eliminated without laying off critical personnel.

At the top of his list is cutting the city’s roughly $9,000 annual dues to the Wyoming Association of Municipalities; he takes issue with taxpayer money going toward lobbying and the association’s stances on bills like property tax relief and gun free zones.

“I don’t think the taxpayers of Powell should pay a lobbying group to go down to Cheyenne and lobby against them,” Bray said.

He also believes that when it comes to zoning, the city should let the free market decide where businesses should go.

“The economic forces will decide where businesses want to locate and the city should more or less get out of the way, rather than, you know, slapping every restriction, and we’ll pay this fee, and pay this fee,” Bray said. “We kill businesses with our city government and I think our city administrator is a big chunk of that …”

He wants to abolish City Administrator Zack Thorington’s position, believing the duties should be handled by the part-time mayor, who directly answers to voters.

The administrator system is “an outgrowth of the original progressive movement, which has a lot in common with socialism, communism,” Bray said, “and it's a bad way to run a government.”

He said the system “leads to abuse and corruption, always,” mentioning his belief that the former city manager in Casper should have been put “in handcuffs.”

Speaking his mind

Bray has no qualms about being provocative, and gained some infamy for a vulgar 2021 email he sent to state Sen. Tara Nethercott (R-Cheyenne). In it, Bray sharply criticized Nethercott’s role in defeating a bill that would have prohibited vaccine mandates.

“If I were as despicable a person as you, I would kill myself to rid the world of myself,” he wrote in part, ending with, “F— YOU C—.”

Bray initially apologized for the language he’d used, but during his 2022 run for the state House, he added more criticism of Nethercott and defended the word choice on his campaign website.

He remains vocal on social media — such as referring to U.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “gynecologist” earlier this year and more recently writing that anyone who would write in Cody Mayor Matt Hall for a legislative seat “isn’t smart enough to spell his name right.”

“There’s nobody that’s ever heard my name who doesn’t have a fairly strong opinion of who I am, and I’m OK with that,” Bray said last week. “And I understand the people who think I’m there to eat their children or whatever, just that’s how I’ve been portrayed.”

But beyond attention-grabbing Facebook posts, Bray said he enjoys visiting with people at length and having them find that “me and the monster that’s been painted for them aren’t the same person.”

“I don’t necessarily set out to offend people so I can unoffend them,” he added. “But there’s a little bit of satisfaction in overcoming the hurdle that I’ve set in front of myself.”

Strong primary support

A carpenter by trade, Bray currently works as a packer at a bentonite plant. Outside of his work, much of the Army veteran’s time is taken up by politics, including serving as an elected Park County Republican Party precinct committeeman and as secretary of the Park County Patriots.

In the primary election, Bray came up short of Spencer by a margin of 173 votes (53.2%) to 149 (45.9%). While he trailed in early and absentee voting, Bray had a strong showing among those who voted on Election Day, beating Spencer 118-113 among that group.

The primary effectively amounted to just a straw poll, as the race will be solely determined by the results of the general election.