Jimmy Rush

Soon after Jimmy Rush and his family moved to Park County from Texas, he decided to become an election judge as a way to get involved and serve the community. 

He said what he saw, an electronic tabulation system he said is open to security breaches, made him concerned about election security. 

As someone who’s spent 30 years in electronic systems management, Rush said he’s now running for Park County Clerk to, in large part, figure out any potential issues and ensure elections are secure in the future. 

“We're those type of people that we just can't sit on the bench and watch stuff happen and not do anything about it — we've always been involved,” he said. “I was out in Wapiti at the schoolhouse where we live, and I just having the electronic background that I have in security, there were just some things that threw up flags.

“I want to see what's going on, and I want to verify that it's working right, and that's part of why I want to run.”

Rush lives with his family in Wapiti, where they moved to in 2021. 

He served nearly nine years in the United States Navy as an electronic technician, specializing in radar systems, encrypted communications, navigation equipment, and other critical systems, much of his time being spent on a minesweeper which deployed across the world, including the Mediterranean and the Middle East during the war in Iraq. 

After his Navy service, Rush worked his way into a career in electronic security in the energy industry, including physical security, cybersecurity, information security, data security, cameras, access control, biometric readers, automated gates, turnstiles, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems, production systems, software/hardware verification, and technical team management.

Rush said he was able to revamp a company’s SCADA system despite not knowing anything about the program before taking on the job. 

Moving to Park County, he said, offered a chance for a slower pace, so he took advantage of his CDL licence to get into delivery work, such as propane delivery and tractor trailer food delivery to restaurants throughout the region.

He and his wife Christen also own and operate Rush Services and Jimmy Rush Music in the Cody area. The couple also have four children. 

Rush, who was injured while serving in the Navy, is also a cancer survivor, having been diagnosed with stage five thyroid cancer after moving to Wapiti. He eventually had to have his entire thyroid removed, and since then has worked on regaining his health and losing weight. 

Now he’s recovered enough to dive into a race for county clerk against Park County First Deputy Clerk Hans Odde. Current County Clerk Colleen Renner is not running again after three terms at the helm. 

Rush said while he doesn't have the same experience Odde has in terms of actually working in the office, he’s got plenty of experience that could help the office, both with elections and other matters. 

He said as crucial as elections are, that’s definitely a big priority. Rush said he’s not set on hand counting has to be the solution — although he said it would work well and be safe — but first off, he’d just like the county to be able to audit the tabulators whenever they want to and be able to ensure they’re properly secure.  

“There was a time when I was, as a technician for this company that I was working for, I could pull up my laptop, I could go in, type in an IP address, and log into machines all over the world, and I could go in there, and I could tell that machine, you know, if it scans a board and it sees 12 inches, I could tell it to see 13 inches,” Rush recalled. “The customer would never know unless they put a tape measure on it, said, 'Hey, this isn't 12 inches,' but I could log into that machine at any time, and that's kind of the setup we have right now. 

“Our machines that are counting our votes, they can be connected to the internet. Anyone that knows how to log into the machines can log into the machines. And again, I'm not saying there's anything going on, but what I'm saying is we don't know if there's anything going on.”

Rush also said he was dismayed by Wyoming county clerks supporting mail-in ballots in past years, and said, “There's nothing conservative about mail-in ballots. They're not safe, they're not secure, and so it's very hard, as a conservative Republican myself, to believe that someone who's saying that they're a Republican, but yet they support mail-in ballots.”

Beyond elections, Rush said there’s also the opportunity to improve workflow in the clerk’s office as far as the title work and other processes done year-round. 

He said coming from the military, the concept of constant training is deeply ingrained, and he would want to make sure his team was well trained to assist with anything under the office’s purview. 

“I want to make the office very open and user friendly to the public,” he said.