At their convention last month, members of the Park County Democratic Party approved a platform based on “democracy, justice, humanity, facts, compassion, freedom, and human dignity.” Now they need some candidates to run on it.

During the party’s April 18 convention in Cody, convention chair Kelly Tamblyn encouraged the roughly two dozen attendees to consider the several dozen positions that are up for election this year.

“We need people to run for office,” Tamblyn told the group.

“It might be scary and it might be running to lose,” the Cody city councilwoman added, but having another candidate in a race forces the other candidates or incumbents to explain “why they are doing what they’re doing.”

No local Democrats have run for a partisan office since 2018, and none have announced a campaign so far this year. But county party Chair Ann Pasek has been encouraging her members to step up.

“We have an excellent platform for people to run on,” she said in a Friday interview.

The platform

The preamble to the local Democrats’ platform says the party advocates for laws and policies “that defend the rights of all individuals without exception, preserve our environment, and honor the individual rights and institutional roles stated in the United States Constitution.”

The first plank says the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness apply to everyone, “regardless of citizenship, race, gender, language, national origin, ethnicity, religious preference, age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or political beliefs."

It specifically lists eight of those rights, including marriage equality, gun regulation, freedom from racial/ethnic and sexual/gender discrimination, “access to necessary healthcare including abortion” and the abolition of the death penalty.

The Democrats’ plank differs from the Park County Republican Party platform, which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman, describes gender as “an immutable characteristic established by God and manifested by DNA” and says the government should secure individual rights “from conception.” The GOP also passed resolutions in February rejecting the argument that abortion qualifies as healthcare and calling for the death penalty to be expanded beyond murder convictions to encompass pedophilia and rape. (The party did reverse course and voted down the proposed death penalty expansion when the topic came back up for debate this month.)

Another Democratic Party plank related to “Good Government Practices” includes calls for separation of church and state, science-based policies “and comprehensive public services including fully funded education, law enforcement, welfare, social security, Medicare and veterans’ benefits.”

The platform later adds that, “Private education shall not receive tax monies and shall meet the same standards as public institutions.”

The Republican Party platform, meanwhile, backs a school voucher system.

The parties’ positions also differ on elections. While the local GOP has passed multiple resolutions calling for votes to be counted by hand, the Democratic platform includes support for electronic vote counting. That’s listed alongside support for same-day voter registration, absentee voting, a nonpartisan legislative districting process, restoration of rights for ex-convicts and full campaign finance transparency.

“Voting barriers should be eliminated for eligible citizens,” the Democratic platform adds.

The document also includes support for continued public ownership of and access to public lands, while the final plank calls for efforts to minimize the impact of human-caused climate change.

Greatly outnumbered

At April’s Democratic convention, attendees debated the wording of several planks, but had little disagreement on the overall message.

Tamblyn reminded the body that Democratic candidates would have to explain and defend the platform on the campaign trail.

The last time a local Democrat ran for a partisan office, in 2018, Paul Fees of Cody garnered 26.2% of the vote against Republican Sandy Newsome in House District 24 and former Democrat party chair Mike Specht of Clark received 18% of the vote against incumbent House District 50 Rep. David Northrup of Powell.

Voter registration figures have only gotten more lopsided since then, due in part to hundreds of Democrats switching over to the Republican Party. As of last week, the county had 14,551 registered Republicans and 958 Democrats, a ratio of more than 15 to 1.

The local Democrats lost roughly a third of their members in 2022, when then-U.S. Rep. and Donald Trump critic Liz Cheney faced off with now-Rep. Harriet Hageman in the Republican primary.

The county party’s membership sank “because everyone chose to switch for Cheney,” Tamblyn said, “and they just didn’t switch back.”

(Cheney ultimately picked up less than 24% of the vote in Park County and lost in a landslide to Hageman.)

Working to change hearts

Ahead of Wednesday’s deadline for changing parties for the 2026 primary, Pasek discouraged her members from crossing over to the Republican Party. For one thing, “we do not have the numbers” to influence the results of August’s Republican primary, she wrote in an email to members. “We need to change hearts and run Democratic candidates.”

County elections data analyzed by the Tribune indicates the party lost a net of 43 Democrats to the GOP this year — down from the 550 they hemorrhaged in 2022.

Pasek said Friday that she’s working to get out the word that “the Democrats are here in Park County.”

On Saturday, party members hosted a table at a Politics in the Park event in Cody. Pasek said people from the left, right and middle of the political spectrum enjoyed being at Cody City Park together.

“The more you talk to someone the more you can find common ground,” she said in a Monday news release.

In that same release, Park County Democratic Party Vice Chair Denise Shelton called this “a critical time for Wyoming.”

“Political agendas are moving quickly and continue to widen the divide among Wyomingites,” Shelton said. “I am proud to be a part of an organization who strives to bring all sides back to center.”

Pasek noted on Friday that politics are a pendulum that swings back and forth — and she expressed confidence it will eventually swing back the Democrats’ way.

“My goal is that when people are ready to turn around, because they’ve been RINOs [Republicans In Name Only], and they’re ready to turn around and go back to the [Democratic] party, that we’ll have a party for them,” Pasek said. “And I do think it will happen.”

(Editor's note: This version corrects Tambyln's role with the party.)